Pretty Kitty
by ficlit78
Summary: OVER 1.5 MILLION VIEWS! Post Season 3. Eric senses Sookie's return and is driven mad by the need to see her. We all know what happens when a human and a vampire bond, but what happens when a fairy Chooses a vampire? 3RD PLACE- Fangreaders' Sookie Stackhouse Award 2012 and 3RD PLACE- Fangreaders' Adele Stackhouse Award 2012. 1ST PLACE Mr. January Award & 3RD PLACE AB Award.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Post Season 3. Eric senses Sookie's return and is compelled to see her. What does he find? The characters and True Blood universe belong to Charlaine Harris and Allan Ball. The story is mine. I own nothing of the franchise except a jones for a tall, handsome Swede.

She'd been back for several days.

I'd felt her, felt our minute blood tie flare back to life the moment she returned from whatever place I'd been unable to find her. The raw, tingling pulse of sunshine that shone just behind my eyes, it could be nothing else. Sookie. She was home.

Her absence over the last few months left it difficult for me to maintain my composure. My stoicism betrayed none of my inner agony. I continued to run my bar and mediate as Sheriff, but inside, I was going alarmingly mad.

Where was Sookie? Where the fuck had she gone off to?

My networks were notified. My spies were all put on alert. Find the girl. Look high and low. Watch Compton, see if she returns to him. Follow her family and friends. Bug their phones. Keep close tabs on her idiot brother and shifter boss. If she was within five hundred miles, I would know it.

Then suddenly our tie sizzled back to life and I knew before any of my associates called (and many of them did), my little Fae had returned home.

The first night, Pam had reined me in, stopping me from flying out the door of Fangtasia, across the dark expanse between Shreveport and Bon Temps, and straight to the steps of the old Stackhouse home. The need in me to do so was so great that Pam had actually slapped me, shocking me with her insubordination. My fangs clicked menacingly at her, as did hers to me.

"Don't be stupid," she hissed. "She'll never speak to you. Not like this."

I paused halfway towards the door. "I have to," I rumbled back. "I _need_ to see her."

"Then see her. But do not let her see _you_. She is stubborn, your little obsession. Observe her first. Scent her. Determine if she still wishes you harm." Pam's eyes glittered at the thought of my weakness for an unknown problem like a hybrid Fae. Her eyes fluttered as she tried to pull together a rational argument. "I won't have you throw yourself at her feet, only to feel our bond die as she stakes you. You _will _take care, Eric."

I pulled an unnecessary breath, letting my fangs retreat. She was right. I must approach Sookie slowly, if not for myself, then for her own delicate state of mind. I had no idea where she'd gone, or if she'd done so willingly. She might be frightened. Or injured. Or perfectly happy and prepared to move on with her life. There was no way to know, that was, until I looked upon her with my own eyes and felt her emotions through our connected blood. And I did not need to interact with her for that. I could merely observe.

I nodded to my progeny. "Very well. I will stay hidden."

Pam expelled an equally useless breath and nodded. "Excellent."

I flew off. Fuck the car. Human speed limits were not an option tonight.

I landed at Merlotte's first, inhaling deeply the moment I alighted in the parking lot. The scent of her was so old that is was almost completely written over by the smells of others. She was not here, nor had she been in the past two months at least. I took off.

I shot straight to the Stackhouse home. I didn't land, I couldn't risk her seeing me. I kept to the tree line, hovering twenty feet in the air, moving slowly. I rounded the property, taking in the dim lights in the living room and solitary yellow light in an upstairs window. I leveled myself with that window, my telescopic eyesight zooming in with no trouble.

I froze.

There.

Right goddamn there.

My blood tie with her sang on my end, ricocheting through my body as it recognized its other half. There, laying peacefully amongst quilts made by dead loved ones, was my Sookie. She was reading in bed, her lamp turned just so that if fell across her face and onto the page before her.

I inhaled without thinking, scenting for blood, searching for injury, momentary fury shooting through me at the thought of her being hurt while she'd been away. But there was nothing of that nature in the air. Indeed, Sookie smelled…like pure angel.

From my vantage, I could smell everything. She had taken a shower tonight. She'd used something that smelled like peaches with minimal chemicals. She'd brushed her hair, the scent of the tendrils drifting lightly around me. Her sheets had been dried in the sun. I could taste it at the back of my throat as I breathed. And most of all, I scented her pumping blood. Far sweeter than peaches and more precious than sunshine, my sweet little Fae smelled naturally of pure vampire temptation.

I am dead. I do not intoxicate on any substance. I have no explanation as to why Sookie Stackhouse was able to go straight to my head and leave me reeling. It had been a mild annoyance before she'd left. It was almost incapacitating now. The woman knocked me down. Hard. I reached out to steady myself on a nearby branch as I collected myself. It took everything I had not to throw myself at that window, lack of invitation be damned.

Instead, I watched. I pulled up with resolve and stayed still, taking in every little detail of the face I hadn't seen in far too long.

She hadn't changed a bit. Obviously. She was still young. Still pretty. Still tan, which surprised me for some reason. I hadn't expected her to do something as frivolous as maintain her sunbathing regime, not when she'd left me to the horrors of worst-case-scenario thoughts. Perhaps all Faes were naturally golden. I had no fucking idea. There were some things in this world I simply wasn't schooled in.

She was reading a thick book on the Battle at Bull Run. I cocked my head at her choice. It was her gran's book. I could smell an older, gentle soul in the paper. The house was saturated with it, intertwined with my love's. She was captivated by its content, her fingers flicking the pages at the charming speed of human reading. I let out a breath I'd been holding for months. It was the essence of relief. She was safe. I felt no pain or fear in our tie. Her blood in my body whispered a tiredness, and a greater wisdom of the world, but she was still Sookie, the petite waitress who dared to stare me down and call me a no good bastard when all others gaped in wonder. Her presence back in my world thrilled me to the bone.

Entranced, I continued to stare.

She was so absorbed, she did not notice the other presence in her room.

But I did.

I sensed the cat slink into her room before I saw it. It leapt lightly up onto the edge of her bed. A tabby, with the perky ear set and jaunty tail of an animal about a year old, it had yet to mature into that slow disinterestedness that was an adult feline. From the lack of its smell in the house and the newness of its life, she'd obviously acquired this pet very recently. Days, even. Sookie looked over briefly from her book, smiled gently, and went back to her page.

"Hey, sweetie," she mumbled quietly.

It needed to more invitation and cantered happily up the bed, closer to its mistress. Without preamble it climbed onto her stomach, walking a tight circle before settling down on her nightshirt. Still deeply engrossed in her reading, Sookie did not look up as her hand lifted. At the brush of her fingers to the animal's head, the room exploded with the contented purr of a creature wildly in love with her touch.

I did not notice my heart clench.

The tabby's head slipped back, baring its neck to her fingers as she scratched along its ears and chin before slipping her tapered fingers down, following the contours of its delicate spine, palming its ribcage, before rounding off with its tucked-in tail. The procedure started all over again. Heavenly strokes to its face, down its back and haunches, and finally the tail.

I was in Hell.

With an imagination that only a vampire can boast, I was suddenly there in its place, resting my ear against her tummy, rubbing my chin against her shirt and reveling in the scent of her closeness. Her hand moves in my hair, which I've left natural and without gel so that her fingers can twist it into little tornadoes, only for her to release them, the strands flipping back to their normal state. Her nails ghost over my scalp, sending shivers down my spine that I already feel at the mere idea. She pets me. She absently adores me. And my significantly louder, vampiric purr erupts, letting her know that more than one creature was wildly in love with her touch. Maybe she would read aloud to me. Maybe she wouldn't. Maybe she'd set her book aside and talk to me about the fascinating little nothings that composed her life. Maybe she wouldn't. Maybe I'd turn my face into her bellybutton and whisper every damn secret and dream I'd kept locked in my head for centuries. She would continue to touch me sweetly, wordlessly encouraging me.

I shook my head hard. These longings irked me savagely. Vampires do not seek physical contact that doesn't end in feeding or fucking. There's no need for it. Why did these visions attack me so vehemently? Why was I so enthralled at the idea of Sookie stroking me like a whipped pet?

I focused back on the creature nestled under her breasts.

The cat was still awash with pleasure. It uncoiled from its balled up position and stretched long and wide on its back, down the length of Sookie's stomach, hips and valley between her thighs. Shamelessly, it offered its unprotected belly to her ministrations. Sookie didn't even spare it a glance; she took the creature's submission as a natural progression. Her hand reached down and stroked it from chest to groin, flattening the fur, thrilling the animal. It arched up into her hand, desperate for more. She gave it, petting again and again, her nails teasing slightly along the skin.

And suddenly the cat could stand no more.

With a predator's speed, that sweet little tabby latched onto its mistress's hand, claws out, fangs bared. In a flash, it bit the silky skin of her inner wrist, ears back as it held its prey tightly, sinking its teeth into my beautiful Fae's arm.

Jealousy roared in my ears.

Sookie jumped at the unexpected attack, looking down its supine form in mild disapproval.

"Ouch," she said kindly, rocking her arm back and forth, egging it on despite herself. "That hurts."

The cat seemed to understand and switched tactics. Still holding on for dear life, the tabby retracted its sharp teeth and replaced them with its tongue, licking the bite mark with adoring apology. Sookie's face scrunched at the rasping, sandpapery feel, willing her ticklishness away. She opened her mouth to speak, probably in praise, but the cat was still a cat, and it began it fanged attack anew.

Sookie chuckled, watching the strange creature that could not decide between bites or licks. And yet she permitted it, wincing slightly when the cat got a little rough, smiling softly when it gentled and cleaned her wounds.

My mind screamed with yearning.

I too have bitten into that sinfully angelic skin. I have tasted the maddening elixir of her blood, once by force, once by gift. During the gift, I had cradled that same wrist to my own mouth, my tongue teasing along the creamy texture of her skin as she fed me. At that time, I had also prayed for her other hand to slip into my hair, holding me to her, petting me with acceptance for my ways, just as she did that damn cat.

I am disgusted with myself. In all of my considerable existence, I have never required the good opinion of my prey. Whether they gave themselves willingly or not, their terror or adulation was of no importance to me. Their blood—only their blood—was my concern. Now, an angel with liquid paradise running through her veins sat not twenty feet away and all I can think about is the way she looked at fucking Compton whenever she reached for his hand.

I want that look for myself. I want to own that expression on her lovely face. I want that kiss in my office and the feel of her warm hands sliding up my shoulders in a desperate search for anchorage as she returned that kiss for all she was worth. I want the _gift_ of her blood, thrilling me with the knowledge that she _wants_ me to drink it. Without her consent—without her love—the blood that is superior to all others would turn to ash in my mouth.

I want her to awaken me at sunset with a kiss and a smile, pulling at my arms. "Come on," she'd whisper playfully, tilting her head to offer me an early dinner. I'd feed from her gently. Always, I would feed from her gently. She'd pull me outside onto the roof, my heels dragging with the instinct to resist, but the rest of me trusting her implicitly. She'd drag me into the orange-yellow light of the setting sun, her blood protecting me for the three short minutes it took to watch it dip below the rather flat Louisiana horizon.

And she'd hold me.

Watching a sight that I hadn't witnessed for almost half a million nights, my Fae would loop her arms around my waist and sigh, wanting me close. Wanting me happy.

I looked back through her window. She was closing her book and setting it on the nightstand. With one last, loving stroke, she picked up her tabby cat and moved it to her side before slipping down into the depths of her sheets. The lamp went out. I heard her sigh in the darkness.

"Goodnight, Eric," she whispered.

_Fuck!_

She'd seen me. How could she possibly have seen me?

I jolted, nearly falling from my hovering perch. I squinted, my night vision zeroing in on her. I could make out her face perfectly in the black. She wasn't looking at me. She didn't seem to sense me at all. Instead, she reached over and gave that lucky fucking cat one last stroke down its back.

"Good boy," she cooed at him.

And I realized.

My fangs dropped in ecstasy and my tongue slid across them in pure anticipation.

That creature of fang and claw, who bit his mistress with as much adoration as he did when he kissed her with his rough little tongue, had _my _name. He slept in my future place in her bed. He kept her heart warm and healing until she was ready to risk it with his namesake. She'd adopted an animal who couldn't help but bite, who couldn't help but love, and she'd seen _me_ in its nature.

My eyes rolled at the inevitability of us. Soon. Soon I'd have her.

My angel. My Fae. _My Sookie_.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N**: Wow. Just, wow. You guys have been so great! I had totally planned to stop with this itty, bitty one-shot but you guys were awesome with your reviews and asked for a little bit more. What can I say? I aim to please. We continue with Sookie's POV. Hearts, people.

I'd made several forays into the real world after my little...vacation. Grocery store. Library. Jason's house. Work. I even made a stop at Lafayette's animal-printed love shack, just to say hi and have a pretty muted, depressing discussion about Tara's unknown whereabouts. He complimented me on my healthy appearance ("Lookin' hot, Sook.") and asked me about my recent absence ("Where da fuck you been at?"). I answered him evasively, as I had with everyone else. It wasn't important, not for them anyway. I just wanted to get back into my old life, even if that was an impossible hope. Routine would at least give me a sense of security, however papery. Everywhere I went, I felt the tight orbit of people's eyes following me. Their mouths and heads whispered all kinds of garbage about me and my little Houdini act. Big surprise. And they smiled their tight, pained lips in my direction and said they were happy to see me back, usually with a backhanded edge to their concern. I smiled right back. Fuck them.

And then of course, was the _other _orbit of eyes. Further away from the townsfolk and glinting with far more understanding, the supernatural element of Bon Temps watched my every move. It took about three seconds to suss them. Friend and foe. Weres and vamps. Several humans with insider information. I kept my eyes forward. I didn't need to look their way to know they were there. Most of them felt harmless, even the voids of the vamp minds, and that told me plenty. They were Eric's. No question. They skulked in the forest around my house and beyond the reach of the parking lot lights at Merlotte's. I stayed in my house after dark and got a ride to and from work, just to be safe, but there was a lack of malevolence in the air that led me to believe they were simply watching me.

Eric was watching me.

On the third night after my shift was over at midnight, I caught a ride with Arlene. She dropped me at the end of my street, asking hurriedly if I could walk the forty yards to my door so she could get home to her kids.

"Fine. Night!" I smiled, and jumped out. I didn't want to, not in the least, but I couldn't explain to her why. It was just easier to take the brief risk and hope Eric's spies would double as body guards, should I be attacked by less friendly supes.

I shouldn't have worried. My jog grew slower and slower as I approached my front porch. The light was on, as always. I found it comforting to come home to, like someone was waiting for me inside. But tonight, as the crickets chirped merrily in the grass around my house, that bare lightbulb also illuminated a guest on my porch swing. His long legs stretched out in front of him, that lazy, sexy slouch of his filling the seat. Dark jeans, black tank, black leather jacket, strange little talisman on a cord around his neck. I squinted and cursed silently. As he watched me slowly enter the light, I saw a traitor circling and rubbing around his ankles. So much for the loyalty of my new pet.

I came to a halt at the bottom of my own steps. We eyed each other evenly. The rage I had felt for this man for so long had drained from me during my time in the Fae world. So much had happened there, my anger at a lot of things had become too expensive for me to sustain. It was exhausting, hating Eric as vehemently as I had. So when he read nothing of it in my eyes, his own expression lost a fraction of its smugness. A fraction, mind you.

"Hey there, Little Red Riding Hood," he greeted casually, tilting his head.

"Hey yourself." I was tired. I sat on the steps, my back to the railing, my knees propped up in front of me, facing him. From the angle, he could easily see my legs all the way to where my shorts pulled against my ass. I didn't give a damn.

But he didn't seem to notice. Instead, he jerked his chin towards his feet. "Lovely animal. Very...affectionate."

I blinked. "Thank you."

"Does it have a name?"

Pause. "Lulabelle."

Another pause, his this time. "He's male."

I blinked again. "Mittens."

A dark chuckle. "His feet aren't white."

My arms crossed my knees. "Sweetie Pie."

"There," his finger danced with conviction. "A plausible lie. Better."

I sighed. "Can I help you with something, Eric?"

He leaned forward, his forearms coming to rest on his knees. His long, pale fingers dangling between his knees. My secretly named kitty saw them and his eyes widened as he zeroed in on ten airborn targets. He rose to his hind feet and batted at them experimentally. Eric twitched them teasingly. The kitty quickly became over-excited and launched himself at his new toys, slicing and gripping those elegant digits in his furry clutches. Eric was oblivious, the thread-thin scratches healing instantaneously. I couldn't help it, I smiled wanly.

"He likes you. I've never seen an animal - a real one - trust a vampire before."

Eric smirked slightly, mostly in amusement. "Most won't. Even domesticated animals are wary of us. They sense we are not human. This one is too young to understand the danger."

I cocked my head. "Danger of what? It's not like you drink animal blood. Why should they fear you?"

He smiled with a bit more warmth. "If you were swimming in the ocean and a killer whale began to circle you, would you be frightened?"

My mouth opened at the weird turn in conversation, but I closed it and considered his question. I thought of being in the middle of oceanic nowhere. No boat. No safety. I thought of that fifteen foot black-and-white creature, so beautiful, as it appeared out of the blue. Its unnervingly long dorsal fin parting the water as it circled me. Its size. Its power. Seals, its favorite meal, are so much bigger and stronger than me. I shivered internally.

"Yes."

"Why? There's never been a recorded attack in the wild. Humans, theoretically, are perfectly safe around killer whales."

My mind fixated on that fin. It cruised a complete circle around my mind. I shivered again. "It doesn't matter. It's a predator. Its interest in me makes me afraid."

Eric's fingers spasmed suddenly, causing the kitten to bolt under a nearby chair, his tail fluffed, frightened. Eric's eyes didn't leave mine. "It is always wise to fear a predator. Especially one that takes an interest in you."

The wider meaning of his words weren't lost on me. After all, a big, bad predator was sitting four feet away, his interest ever apparent. "Should I join my cat under the chair?"

His smile blazed. My eyes widened at the sight. So rarely did Eric ever smile that wide and mean it. "If you're asking my preference, I would prefer if you ran." I could see the lust for sex and hunting in his gaze, even in the dim. "Or if you fought."

I chuckled tiredly and looked away from him, up into the stars above me. "Fight or flight, huh? I didn't know survival instincts doubled as vampire foreplay."

"With you, Sookie, there isn't much I wouldn't consider as foreplay."

There was an aggressive sincerity to his words. It was easier to close my eyes and dive into my exhaustion than to deal with it. "You didn't answer me before. What are you doing here?"

I heard him move. Sitting back again, I assumed. "Watching you."

I snorted. "I gathered. And others, too. Why are you watching me?"

A pause. "You're in danger."

"Not your concern."

Another pause. "I know."

I cracked an eye and peeked at him. He had indeed sat back into his original high-and-mighty slouch. "So?"

His eyes did that weird, intensifying thing they did and his mouth went hard. The last time I'd seen this look, I'd pulled away from his kiss and broken the spell that had had us pawing each other like animals. My kitty had regained its bravery/stupidity and crept back under Eric's feet. Given the little one's behavior, maybe I should have named him Sookie.

Eric continued to stare. "The possibility of your death...provokes me." He seemed to have trouble finding the words he wanted, like he was struggling in a language he didn't speak fluently. Too bad I didn't understand a lick of Old Norse. Maybe he could better explain in his mother tongue.

"My death would annoy a lot of people, including me. But you're the only one worried enough about it to be sitting on my porch, Eric. I can only imagine you have better things to do with your time."

"Perhaps I want more than to simply prevent your death."

Oh, here we go. "I know, I know. I taste like rainbows and sunshine and children playing and angel's singing and.."

"Honey."

I stopped. "What?"

In a flash, my bench was empty and a killer whale was suddenly in my face, beautiful and deadly and terribly interested in me. His chest was pushed into my shins as he leaned into me, his knuckles tracing softly along my cheek. I barely felt it, it was so light. Just like before. And his expression, flinty and longing, just like before. I didn't move. Hell, I didn't breathe. His eyes touched every inch of my face as he spoke. "I care not for such poetic nonsense. It is meaningless. I have only the memory of taste from my human days, and a thousand years ago in Sweden, the most delicious food available was honey."

His fingertips grazed my lips. "When I tasted you, that is what I thought of."

I smiled gently, remembering the countless times I'd cut myself and sucked the salty, metallic wound. "I think it's been awhile since you've tasted honey then."

With my lips pulled tighter against my smile, he audaciously let his finger slip to my inner lip. He inhaled sharply at the heat and the wet and the velvety smoothness. "Sweet. Warm. Rich. Thick. Perfection."

I couldn't help my whisper. "Then what does everyone else taste like?"

He seemed entranced by my face. Like he'd never touched anything so stunning. I couldn't understand it. I was maybe in the top ten of women in a _small _small town. I was local pretty. Waitress pretty. To enthrall a man like Eric seemed preposterous. He could have anyone. _Anyone_. Angelina Jolie and Megan Fox and Julia Roberts and every looker in the past ten centuries before them. I held my breath again and waited.

He watched his finger slide against my blunt, human teeth. I let him. At length, he said, "After that day, they've tasted like oxidized copper."

I grimaced. "That sounds disgusting."

His eyes finally met mine. He seemed to see me now. "Yes."

I swallowed. "All the more reason to assume you're only here for blood."

The stubborn set of his jaw, the one that used to drive me crazy, clenched resolutely. "If I were, I'd have taken it by now."

My own jaw set. "Oh, but you're smarter than that. Why force me once, when you can manipulate me indefinitely?"

"I am not Bill."

"Bullshit," I said tartly. "You just weren't sent, that's all. Don't tell me you wouldn't have done the exact same thing if the Queen had sent you instead of Bill."

Eric growled suddenly and his arms slammed into the railing on either side of my head. I kept my chin up and stared him square in the face, only two inches from mine. Fuck his scare tactics.

"I wish she _had _sent me," he rumbled darkly, looking me up and down with animalistic desire. "To have been your first. To know your body as he does. To know your..." he stopped himself there, but his fangs dropped at the unsaid idea. I didn't flinch. But so help me, his words were lighting fires in places I swore a vampire would never ignite again. I clenched my teeth.

We eye fought each other in silence for several seconds, me trapped between him and the rail. I refused to notice that all I had to do was part my knees and Eric's hips would slot seamlessly between my thighs. I also refused to notice how when we were this close, I could see the elegant, slight curvature of his fangs against his other teeth. Bill's fangs bore a straighter edge to them. Eric's seemed create the tiniest heart shape as a pair. I didn't want to know. I didn't want to soften at this little detail.

Finally, we felt each other relax against each other, until a furry head popped between us and broke us completely with a plaintive mewl.

I exhaled softly. "Hush, sweetie."

He butted Eric's leather-clad arm. "Tell me his name."

I shocked us both and tipped my forehead against his, closing my eyes, blocking him out while welcoming our connection. "Lord Fluffington."

"Tell me."

"Rascal."

"_Tell_ me."

I sighed again. "Buster."

Eric tipped his face closer and rubbed his nose against mine. Sweetly. He inhaled softly and purred as he took my scent. "Lover," he crooned. "Tell me the name of your damn cat."

Like I said, I was tired. I didn't fight, not one single thing in that sentence.

"Eric. I named him Eric."

I brushed a kiss into those deadly, heart-shaped fangs.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N**: Eric's POV

My sweet little ball of fire. Literally. She was just full of surprises.

I had her. Or just enough of her to give me hope. I had her cornered, pinned against myself and this ancient porch of hers. And she wasn't resisting. God knows she could have blasted me halfway across the yard, should she choose to. I can only assume her time in Fae had increased her baffling and wondrous ability to shoot cannonballs of pure energy from her palms. In some ways, I wished for her to try. I'd never had an opponent such as her. I'd grown weary of fighting vamps half my age and weres with their sloppy, V-induced madness. None of them posed serious challenges, as all of their strengths and weaknesses are known to me. I'd never had the pleasure of squaring off against a Fae. Perhaps later, she would agree to a match.

Now, however, I wanted no such rebuff. I wanted her close. So close that I didn't know what to make of it.

Her forehead was against mine. She'd admitted the animal bore my name. I was about to bask in the satisfaction, but she astonished me by leaning in and kissing my teeth.

I inhaled sharply. Her warm little mouth pressed softly against the harsh razors of my canines. No human had ever dared. The presumption. The terrible risk. The intimacy of such an act. And they would have been right to avoid it; I would have gutted even the sexiest fang banger for such an infraction. Vampire fangs are not toys for human pleasure.

But Sookie dared. Sookie_ always _presumed.

I didn't form a kiss around hers and buffer her exploration with my own lips. Instead, I bared them further, letting her hook her lower teeth around one of my fangs, pulling it securely into her mouth. Gently, she sucked. She pressed her tongue against the point. Through my own raging lust, I could feel my blood tie to her. It was singing softly to me. Lust, certainly. She felt desire for me. But her actions weren't governed by it. I pushed passed my own euphoria and focused on her emotional state. As I nuzzled my mouth against hers, I sensed a sweet wave of gentle curiosity. Touching me this way gave her pleasure. She liked the fact that I was letting her. She was also pleased that I didn't retract my fangs as she explored them. I wondered if Bill was as much of a prude in the bedroom as he was everywhere else. Did he shield his fangs from her, like he did all other aspects of his vampirism?

I closed my eyes and gently untangled my teeth from hers, cupped her cheeks, and kissed her properly, fangs and all.

Thanks to that puritan whelp, Sookie had no idea what it was to be involved with a vampire that had no Christian origins and no delusions about being a monster.

Sookie hummed softly as I kept my lips and hands light and undemanding. She moved to my cheek, rubbing hers against it. My eyes rolled slightly. She didn't know such things marked me with her scent, and her with mine.

"I know this kiss," she murmured quietly.

"I don't." I nosed into the crook of her throat and growled, batting her knees off my chest and pushing her feet onto the stair below us. I moved into the space, keeping her face in my hands. "I have _never_ known this."

Sookie smiled and tilted her head very slightly, giving me some, but not all. "In my dreams, you kiss like this."

It was enough to make me pull back and look at her. The blood dreams. Always very amusing. I smiled faintly. "What did you dream of me?"

Her relaxed back against the rail. It took all I had not to scoop her up and settle her firmly in my lap. But I knew it would rile up an otherwise pliant and willing Sookie, so I resisted.

"Mmmm," she hummed thoughtfully. "I shouldn't tell you. You'll be even more insufferable."

Her eyes drooped with weariness. She was so tired. Long day at work, I guessed. But I refused to end this. She was too pleasing. Too accepting of my advances. Tomorrow night might find her in a completely different mood. I would hold onto this until she crossed her threshold and physically separated me from her side.

I reached out and traced her pulse. "Then I'll guess. Tell me, are we here in your home?"

Her brow arched suggestively. "Go fish."

"Hmm," I replied. "Did you dream of us in Dallas?"

Her pulse jumped under my finger. Fuck, I want to drink her there. Instead, I merely smirked. "Aaah, so it was Dallas. The hotel."

"_Don't_ get excited," she rebuked, lowering her eyes in embarrassment. "I doubt my dreams of you would compare to most."

"Why's that, lover?"

"Hush with that," she said, batting at my fingers. I ignored the push and thumbed under her jaw. She didn't seem to notice that she tilted to allow it. "Because you're not all whips and chains and whatnot. God knows what those nasty fangers dream of when they drink from you."

"I wouldn't know. There are only three living people who currently have my blood."

The smallness of the number seemed to surprise her. I withheld their names. They would surprise her further. She resettled her back, taking stock of me. "That all? Huh. Well, still. They probably dream of Fangtasia Eric. In my dreams, you're..."

She stopped again. I raised my brows, hoping to convey genuine curiosity. It _was_ genuine. I was very eager to hear what she had to say.

She sighed resolutely and looked up and away from me. "You're...good to me."

The simplicity of her words had me uncomprehending. My eyes narrowed. "Good to you..."

"Well," her tone was one of strained rationalization, "I assume blood dreams are all about making humans more...responsive...to that vampire, right? So in my dreams, my imagination makes you very sweet. Playful. You tease me, but I see love in your eyes. Your face is softer. You laugh more. Don't get me wrong, you're still you, but your coldness and your superiority complex are just gone. Poof!" she snapped her fingers. "You're vulnerable in front of me. You mourn in front of me."

She looked at me uncertainly, unsure of how I'd react. I did nothing, merely stared. I refused her any expression.

Finally, she shrugged, as if it meant nothing. "See? Nothing terribly racy."

I leaned in again and cupped her throat. I felt a very serious and urgent need to hide from her words, so I brushed kisses into her lips. "And this is how I kiss you in them? Softly?"

She smile knowingly against my mouth. "You kiss me all kinds of ways, Eric. The point is that you mean them. All of them."

With lightning speed, I gripped her ponytail and tugged her head back. She gasped as my lips landed on her delicate throat. "What about this? Did I kiss you like this?" I scraped my fangs against her skin.

She was breathless, but didn't struggle. "Yes," she whispered.

This pleased me. Her imagination didn't gloss over what I was.

"Did I feed from you?"

Another gasp. "Yes."

I felt no arousal from her. I felt no fear either, only excitement. She was being honest. This also pleased me.

"If I fed from you now, would you stop me?"

A tinge of protest projected through our tie. I retracted my fangs instantly and loosened my hold on her hair. But not her attention. "You will answer me."

Her chin lowered against my cheekbone. I moved my lips to her earlobe, licking idly as she considered her answer. She shivered. "I _ought_ to stop you. I still don't know what you want from me, exactly."

I retreated from her drugging skin and regarded her closely. "I want to claim you, Sookie. I thought I'd been clear."

"I'm not a pet, Eric."

"Simple girl," I chided gently. "Pam keeps pets. Sophie Anne keeps pets. I have no interest in simply owning you."

She considered that. I held her eyes and waited. She knew enough of me to know that was true enough. I didn't keep a herd of humans, as many of my kind did. I never saw the appeal. I had more of a...free range policy. Humans willing to provide blood and sex came to me at Fangtasia, then left when the sun rose. A retinue struck me as cumbersome. I preferred Pam's company. Or just my own.

"Bill offered to abstain from my blood to prove his love was for me and not my unusual taste. Would you do the same?"

My fangs clicked back into place and I hissed softly. "Fuck Bill," I growled warningly.

Her eyes widened, yet she didn't move. "Answer me, Eric."

Oh, I planned to. My opinion of Bill sank even lower as I looked at this unique creature cinched tightly against me. How could he refuse himself so much? Why could he simply not explain to her? To flagellate himself for this girl for no reason, to underestimate her ability to grasp what the blood exchange meant. Fuck, I wanted to kill him all over again.

Without warning, I pulled her index finger to my mouth and carefully pierced her skin with my fang. She gasped and tried to pull away, but I held fast. I sucked gently, pulling her incandescent blood into my body. I tensed as my own blood roared in ecstasy, the essence of Fae and Vampire uniting in a flood of red.

"Never," I swore to her fervently.

She opened her mouth to protest angrily. With preternatural speed, I sliced my own finger and placed it between her teeth before she could blink. She jerked away, but several drops hit her tongue and she inhaled sharply at the electricity that shot through her head. She moaned in the prettiest, most alluring voice imaginable. Her eyes closed. She was dumbfounded by the sensation. Our life forces pulsed together, pelting us with wave after wave of emotional awareness of the other. I felt my body slacken and I groaned in pure bliss. Sookie panted gorgeously, my blood filling her with tingling pleasure unlike any she'd ever experienced.

Yes. Bill was a fucking idiot. Sookie had clearly never experienced a blood bond before.

I removed her now-healing finger from my mouth and kissed it reverently. "You are not food, Sookie. You are life itself. I will never take from you unwillingly again, but I will not abstain if you ask for my claim. I _will _feed from you," I rasped angrily. "Just as you will feed from me."

She slumped forward, riding out the last of the tiny hurricane I'd unleashed inside her. I shouldered into her head, urging her to rest against me. She did so, pitching completely to me. I wrapped her in my arms and buried my face in her hair. Limply, her arms did the same, wrapping loosely around my waist. She burrowed her nose into my jacket, swallowing huge lungfuls of air and releasing them violently. There she stayed, content in my embrace. Oh, yes. This was right. I was certain of it. Her taste and her scent might attract _all _vampires, but I knew. The way her scent clung to mine, just as she did to me. The way our bloods mingled in our bodies. The way I felt when I held her. There was an indescribable, yet undeniable completion. We fit each other. She wasn't meant for anyone else. She was mine. Only mine. Bill, the supposed great love of her life, barely qualified as a dress rehearsal.

"Sweet fae," I murmured into her blonde mane. "Talk to me."

Her gasping had quieted. She lay still against me. "I'm tired," she murmured.

I had pushed hard enough for one night. My lover needed rest. I picked her up and walked to the door. "Let me in, Sookie."

Eyes closed, she didn't even look up from her curled position against my chest. She seemed to feel my honorable intentions and didn't argue. "Come in, Eric."

Victory throbbed in me. I'm sure she felt it, but gave no sign. I took in every speck of dirt in her filthy, maenad-mauled house as I launched up her stairs. That was the first thing to change. Tomorrow. I made a decision to call the necessary people to fix this mess immediately. I would not have Sookie living in squalor.

I moved down her hallway and into her room, setting her out on her neatly made bed. "Shall I undress you?" I asked solemnly.

She opened her eyes and shook her head slightly. "I'll do it. You should go now." There was nothing in her voice except honesty. She was exhausted and confused.

I nodded and moved to leave. She reached out and took my hand. As I have mentioned, vampires do not normally respond well to being unexpectedly touched in such a familiar way. The fact that her light, warm fingers in mine made me almost fall to my knees in pleasure caused me to gasp in awe. Magic, my lover. She smiled at me.

"Tomorrow night. I'll come to you."


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N**: Sookie's POV. You guys are still the awesomest. Prepare to drown in a sea of lemon juice come next chap.

I woke up to sunlight streaming through my window and Eric sleeping soundly at my side. I reached over and pet him, forgiving him for being so lovable to my uninvited guest last night.

"Judas," I accused anyway. He cracked two large, green eyes at me, then promptly shut them again, the sunshine dragging him against his will back to his catnap. He and the vampire had even more in common than I'd considered. They both dropped like stones when the sun was out. I rubbed my own eyes and checked the clock. Eleven fifteen. Damn. I had the lunch shift in an hour.

Kicking off my blankets, I cursed the luck of maenads and vampires and whatever damn else out there, who had the luxury of living forever and accumulating vast amounts of gold and art and money, then investing it in the 21st Century so they could sit on their ass while it multiplied. Sure beat the crap out of minimum wage and sucky hours. I wondered vaguely how much money Eric had stockpiled away. Probably millions. Possibly billions. Especially since I was sure he wasn't above killing for it. Or glamoring, at the very least. I snorted as I stripped out of my jammies and grabbed a towel. Then again, maybe not. Eric seemed to enjoy challenges too much to simply take what he wanted. Better to cajole, lie, trick and charm his way into money. That way he was paid twice: once with cash, twice with the satisfaction of proving that humans were just rubes easily duped.

The shower sprang to life as I turned the handle. I stood back and let it warm up. As it did, I noticed where my mind had immediately gone.

Eric.

Always Eric.

He was like Rome. All thoughts eventually led to him.

I stepped into the water and sighed as it sluiced away the burger grease from last night's shift...and the residual, smoky fragrance of leather. I scrubbed myself harder than I normally would.

When I was sure I smelled like me again, I rinsed off and stepped out. I wasn't sure why it was such a big deal to get Eric's jacket out of my skin. After all, I'd given into my attraction to him last night. Or rather, I'd let him _know_ by putting the moves on him first, instead of the usual other way round. I guessed it had something to do with just wanting to be me. Not Bill's, not the Queen's and most certainly not the King's. Not even Eric's, as alluring as that prospect sometimes seemed. Just regular ole Sookie Stackhouse, resident weirdo and borderline recluse. No one caring what I did or thought, and certainly not caring about bizzaro things like how I tasted. Maybe I was longing for the simpler days, when I was the only oddity in town.

I tossed on my Merlotte's uniform and hurried downstairs. I needed to grab something to eat before I left and I wasn't even sure I had flour, much less actual food. I checked the fridge and rejoiced. Cold pizza. Perfect. I yanked two slices and devoured them as I grabbed my keys. I was ready to tear out the door when a small piece of paper on the knob brought me up short. I shoved the last of the second slice in my mouth and picked it up. A startlingly elegant script greeted me.

_Lover,_

_I cannot stand the idea of you coming to me at Fangtasia. A car will pick you up after work and bring you to my home. I will rise shortly after. Wear white._

_~Eric_

I swallowed carefully and reread the note. A car? His home? Rise? Wear white? He couldn't be serious.

I was already late and didn't have time to think about it. I ran upstairs, grabbed one of my white summer dresses and - sheepishly - a prettier set of underwear. I was already in white sandals, so I didn't bother with shoes. Shoving my clothes into an overnight bag, I flew out of the house, into my car, and gunned it towards work.

The shift dragged like the stubbornest mule.

It didn't help that it wasn't busy. I tried to fill the time by cleaning tables that weren't in my station and refilling whatever containers were less than brimming with condiments, but busy hands couldn't stop my overactive brain.

_Ericericericeric wearwhite ericericericeric you coming to me ericericericeric bring you to my home ericericericeric_

Good God in heaven, why did thoughts of that man torture me so? Bill had never invaded my head this badly, not even in the beginning when I was a naive hayseed just happy to be with someone I didn't have to mentally listen to. Maybe that was the difference. I knew what I was now. Just as I now knew more fully what a vampire was, what they were capable of. I was a fairy hybrid. Eric was an unapologetic vamp. We knew each other, warts and all. I had not had that with Bill, not until his false intentions had been stripped away, one after the other, and he stood quivering and leaking blood from his eyes. He'd been sorry. He'd been wrong. Still. I felt nothing but revulsion.

With Eric, it was backwards. Revulsion slowly evolving into... I stopped pouring mustard into a yellow bottle and considered. Evolving. But into what, I still didn't know. But it was big, whatever it was. Hairy, with lots of bells and whistles and consequences and god knows what else attached to it. I gulped and continued my work. Tonight, he and I were going to have a nice, well-lit, asexual conversation about the elephant in the room that we were finally addressing. And I wasn't going to weaken. Not one single iota. I was going to stay on the rails and ask well-considered, relevant questions about our future together and he would respond in a respectful, informative manner.

Yes.

It was settled, then.

E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S

A car was waiting for me when I stepped outside into the parking lot. I'd quickly changed into my dress and tussled my hair with water in the bathroom sink. And despite my ongoing pep talk to myself about how there'd be no hanky-panky tonight, I pulled on the sexy panties and bra. My rationale was when a girl wears a pretty dress, she does a disservice to herself by not wearing pretty underthings. _Horse puck_, my brain accused me. I snorted and ignored it. Who cared what it thought anyway?

My driver was polite and nondescript. He opened the door of an expensive, understated black sedan. I thanked him and stepped in. He moved to the driver's seat and without a word, took off down the highway. He didn't put the radio on. He didn't look at me in the mirror. He might as well have been a robot. I found I didn't mind. I felt weird enough being fetched for his employer. I immediately banked any jealous thoughts about this being a regular gig for my quiet friend at the wheel. If Eric was in the habit of having women brought to him via chauffeur, well. I looked out the window at the rapidly fading sunlight and jutted my chin. Well, he just better not is all I can say.

We pulled up at a fancy wrought iron gate. The driver punched in five digits and it opened. He pulled up a circular driveway to an elegant home that was probably six times the size of my own house. It was a muted, clean white with lots of stone work. Granite, if I had to guess, and was very impressed if it was. I knew from Jason that granite was expensive to work in, difficult to sculpt and heavy as hell to move. Yet there were many polished pieces of it littering the front entry, including the steps to the door. Fancy pants.

The driver opened my door and gestured for me to step out. I did so, my eyes never leaving the house.

"Master requests that you enter alone. He asks you to make yourself comfortable. He will be with you very soon." His voice startled me.

I jumped slightly and turned to him. "Is there anyone else here? Pam? Other employees?"

He shook his head. "No, ma'am. Mr. Northman lives alone."

This pleased and terrified me all at once. We'd be alone for our little talk. We'd also be alone for any not talking we decided to do. But I showed nothing as I nodded to him. "Thank you, sir. I appreciate the ride."

He seemed amused at my gratitude. "Good evening, Miss Stackhouse."

With that, he was back in his car and disappearing down the drive. I was left alone in the dusky light in front of a mansion. I took a deep breath and hurried up the stairs, the sudden solitude of an unfamiliar place giving me the creeps. I tried the knob and it turned with no trouble. Either Eric left it open for me, or he saw little point in locking it. Somehow, I figured it was the former. I entered the foyer, closing the heavy oak door behind me. My shoes made stark, loud clicks as the granite continued into the house, its unforgiving surface creating clacking footfalls for my otherwise soft shoes. I hated the noise. It let everyone in the house know where I was. I slipped off my sandals and left them by the door, instantly happier as my bare feet slid silently along the tiles.

The living room was beautiful. The kitchen was surprisingly big and well-appointed. The library was filled to capacity. The dining room was fit for heads of state.

Nothing surprised me about Eric's display of tasteful wealth, but nevertheless, I could not help but marvel. He had _excellent _taste. Hardwoods and metals and tapestries and spatial design. Everything worked harmoniously. As I moved through the rooms, I touched surfaces, book spines, pots, bowls, chair backs, door frames. The house smelled so clean, I knew Eric would have no trouble picking up my scent in these rooms. I wanted him to know I'd been there, looking at his things. Touching them. Thinking about him as I did so. I got a strange thrill imagining him as he followed my trail like a police dog. The only thing I didn't touch (but sorely wanted to) was an ancient looking crown that he had discreetly displayed in his study. It had an odd shape to it, with almost no adornment except the excellence of the forging itself. It looked much older than the crowns I'd seen in books about monarchs in the Middle Ages. It looked as if it were for a king in a time when kingdoms were not yet formed. Countries were merely collections of chiefdoms. Royalty were simply elders of means and battlefield prowess. And since no other artifacts accompanied it, I willed my hands away and left it on its plain stand.

It wasn't meant to be touched. Not unless its owner gave permission.

I turned away from it and checked my watch. It was almost six. The sun would go down in about thirty minutes. I was already tired of waiting.

I found a stairwell and ascended to the top floor. Living quarters. Exactly what I wanted.

I followed the intuitive flow of the hallway until it led to a large double door. I didn't look in the other rooms. I already knew they were filled with more extravagance. The intricate carving and lovely French handles beckoned me. This was _his_ room. I was certain of it. Without thinking, I opened them both and pulled them wide, swirling into the room and closing them swiftly behind me.

Utter darkness met me. I stayed still until my eyes adjusted and I could make out a lamp on a console table. I reached out and switched it on. Weak light spilled into the room and landed on the bed against the other wall. Pure satisfaction surged through me as I looked at the sleeping form lying on his back amid an ocean of $2,000 sheets.

Naked to his waist and maybe more, pale and beautiful. Eric. I'd found him.

Granted, he had invited me here. And he hadn't locked his bedroom door, so he clearly wasn't concerned about me walking in. Still. I felt an almost predatory victory that I'd trespassed into my vampire's lair and found him helpless as a babe.

I instantly checked myself. _A _vampire's lair.

With a shameless voyeurism that would have given Gran the vapors, I walked right over to him, pulling up a large wingback chair closest to his side, and pulled my legs under my ass as I sat down into it. I arranged my dress so that I was at least covered respectfully, then settled back and stared openly at a sight most humans weren't trusted with.

I liked what I saw. Not even for the most obvious reasons, either. I liked that in sleep, Eric's stunningly perfect body wasn't being used as intimidation. I liked that in the nude, it wasn't dressed to frighten or leave people awe-struck with black and leather. I like that his hair was messed up. I like that his eyes weren't narrowed and his mouth wasn't drawn tight. I liked that, despite the lack of breath, I could almost see a man lying there. Not a killer. Not a monster. A man.

Again, I was struck by how different my thoughts were for Eric than they'd been for Bill. When Bill slept, I'd had an almost comical sense of contentment wash over me. Like a mother would with her sleeping children. It was calm and sweet and fulfilling.

I didn't feel full looking at Eric. I felt ravenous. I wanted to throw myself on his cold form and slap him awake. I wanted to tear open his chest, cup his dead heart and resuscitate it with my bare hands. I wanted to bite and lick and kiss and scream and hit and hear him roar with pleasure, knowing he'd respond with the same craving for angry, violent, insatiable need. It wasn't calm. It wouldn't be sweet. I was no longer Snow White. Now, I infinitely preferred red.

I don't know how long I sat there staring at him. I guess it was long enough to lose focus.

Suddenly his eyes were open, returning my frank appraisal. His head was turned towards me. His eyes stayed soft. So did his mouth.

"A lovely sight," he murmured appreciatively. There was no mocking in his tone.

I took in the overwhelming vision of naked, living Eric and made a decision. "You blood bonded to me last night," I said softly.

His expression didn't change. "Correct."

"Without my permission."

Still no change. "To prove a point. It will fade in time, should you wish."

I took a steadying breath. Decision spoken aloud in three, two, one.

"I do not wish."

He flipped to his side, his muscles rolling with the movement. His sheets slipped low on his hips. He propped his head up in his hand. "Speak plainly, lover. I don't like a tease."

I snorted. Like hell he didn't. Still, I was done playing around. "Your claim on me. A blood bond with me. All of it. I want it. Are you still interested?"

The room dropped several degrees. Eric's face turned to stone. Slowly, he pressed his hands into the mattress, vaulting his weight slightly towards me, as if preparing to pounce. "Yes," he growled harshly.

I nodded, ignoring him as he riled himself up. "Great," I replied. "But I have conditions."

"There will be none."

I ignored him again. _Stay on the rails, Sook_, I chanted. _Stay on the rails. _ "You bet your ass there will be, or I leave right now."

That stopped his advance. Sadly, his eyes slid back into their usual glare of arrogance and his mouth pulled tight against his teeth. Part of me wanted to skip this whole talky part and just concentrate on kissing them soft again. I knew I could do it. I knew I could even make him smile. But I wasn't about to give up another inch of turf in this argument until he and I had a fuckin' understanding.

I jutted my chin. "I want you, Eric. I won't waste time and deny it anymore. And I...feel...something. It's strong and it bothers the hell out of me." I paused and looked him dead in eye. He knew what I wanted.

He looked away and answered stoically. "And I for you. You distract me. You irritate me. I dislike how much I think about you."

Most girls would have sobbed to hear their beaus speak so meanly. Me? I chuckled softly. I understood perfectly what he meant. We felt exactly the same. I bit my lip in thought. "So here's my offer. I'll give you everything you've asked for. I'll feed you. I'll make love with you. I'll exchange blood with you and make our bond permanent. Do you agree to that?"

I felt almost giddy with reckless power. After keeping a tight lid on myself for so long, I was throwing everything I could think of at the man, not feeling one dot of regret. Hell, let him have me. Let him protect me. Care for me. Prove himself to me, like he seems so damn eager to do. What else did I have going on?

And it was working. His eyes had gone round again. I'd shocked the arrogance right out of him. Good.

He slid closer to me while still on his side. The sheet slithered with him. Oh, he was a tempting man. "And your conditions?"

I leaned forward in my chair, planting a hand on the mattress, my face so very close to his. "I don't share, Eric. I will give myself to you and you alone, but I'm a very greedy woman. No more fangers. No more blood whores. Anything you drink, anyone you fuck, it's going to be me. And no more lies. No more keeping me in the dark because you think it's prudent or somehow protects me. You say you're not Bill, I want you to prove it. I want to be able to trust the man I'm with." I dropped my eyes from his. I hadn't meant to say anything so graphic, but there it was. At least there was no mistaking me. "Do we have a deal?"

I don't really know what happened next.

All I know is that I wasn't in a chair. Eric wasn't beside me.

I was in his bed, my hips pinned under his, my dress pressed into his naked body. His face loomed over mine, his expression one I'd never seen before. Disbelief? Anger? Pleasure? Joy? I swallowed and gently reached up to stroke his cheek. "Answer me," I entreated quietly. Why did he have to look so beautiful when I was trying to make him promise? "Do we have a deal?"

His fangs clicked loudly in the hush of the room as he lowered his lips to mine. "I am yours, then. Only yours." He kissed me lightly. I shivered, knowing harder, frenzied contact was soon to follow.

He grabbed my chin and yanked my head up, baring my throat to him. "And you, my lover," he hissed adoringly into my pulse, "_at last_, are mine."


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N**: Eric's POV, and he's awash in citrus. Keep the reviews coming. They're chocolate-covered crack.

I had expected to wake up and find her standing nervously in the foyer, too polite and unassuming to venture further into my home alone. Or at most, find her sitting ramrod straight on a chair in the living room, ankles crossed, hands in lap, watching the doors until I entered.

How often I seemed to forget how wonderfully presumptuous this woman was.

I opened my eyes and found her curled up in my favorite chair, as deep and inappropriate in my home as I could have dared hope. Bare feet. Virgin white dress that instantly made me see red. Eyes that were a thousand miles away. She looked so soft and irresistible, I wanted to eat her alive.

But I didn't move. I didn't want to upset her train of thoughts. Something had given her the resolution to march up here and sit patiently by my side. I was curious to find out what that was.

Finally, she came back to me. Christ, how dark her eyes were in this light. So unlike the rest of her. The fire I loved lived in them. So little and so strong, she had all the destructive power and frailty of a matchbook, this girl. The contrast drove me insane.

Then she made me an offer I couldn't refuse. She offered herself to me. Completely. She demanded I become monogamous to her. An interesting term, one that had me purring with interest. My Sookie was greedy, she said. I was only to fuck and feed with her. Given that all other blood and sex had become unpalatable to me in the last few months, I found her stipulations almost laughable. I finally had full access to the woman who drove my fangs and cock wild with desire, why would I want anyone else?

Speaking of desire, I saw no reason to wait a moment longer. She had offered. I planned to take.

She was under me in a flash. No resistance. Merely wide eyes and breathy requests for me to promise my fidelity. I gave it to her. Gladly. She'd had it long before that night.

Now it was time to collect.

I fisted both hands on either side of her dress hem, gathering it up, then tearing it right down the middle. She jerked at the sound.

"Eric!"

"Hush," I commanded, the tear slowly exposing her torso to me.

"I love this dress!" She sounded breathless.

"I'll buy you every dress in Louisiana," I informed her sternly. "You'll need them, I'm going to tear every one of them from your body."

She shuddered beneath me as the tear completed at the neckline and fell open on either side of her. Her beautiful, golden skin welcomed me under it, her pink panty set doing frightening things to my self-control. "Yes," I purred darkly. "Never wear anything you value in front of me again."

She gasped when I moved in a blur, her bra and panties mere shreds lost somewhere in my sheets. Her eyes were wide, almost frightened, but not quite. She moved to hide her glorious nudity from me and I growled low in disapproval. "No."

"But," she whimpered softly.

"_No_."

She gave me a plaintive look and let her hands fall away from her body. She closed her eyes slowly and swallowed. She was trying to calm down. I admired her for her bravery. Humans in her position beneath me had often become hysterical with fear or anticipation. She breathed deeply and looked up at me. "What do you want first? I mean, I can feed you if you're hungry, or - "

I gripped my cock and ran it teasingly along her sweet little folds. Wet heat greeted me and I hissed loudly over her strangled cry of surprise. "Later," I gritted harshly. I needed inside her. Now. That would make everything better. I'd be able to think clearly once I'd taken her. I'd also be able to control my feeding better once I'd slaked my overwhelming desire to fuck her senseless. To attempt to feed beforehand might prove dangerous for her.

I played with her, purposefully sliding over her clit and making her squirm. "So wet for me, Sookie," I goaded her.

She cursed in frustration, lifting up into my hips. "You're no better off," she challenged, looking down at my raging hard-on. The sight of us together so intimately filled her face with wonder, despite her pride. She ran her tan fingers down my pale chest, stopping to stroke my hipbone experimentally. Her mouth fell open with longing and her chin tipped back with pleasure. Suddenly she was nothing but sweet acceptance. "Please, Eric. Don't tease."

Her words did something odd to me. Instead of increasing her frustration, instead of taunting her further, my combativeness melted and I lowered my lips to her cheek. "Yes, lover," I relented. I pushed gently inside her and we both broke into shuddering moans. She was tight. Unusually so. Her young muscles stretched gloriously around me, yielding to me as I pressed deeper. Carefully, I pulled back, wanting to ease into her slowly. Unlike the used-up fang bangers I was accustomed to, her youthful inexperience meant her sweet tightness sucked me gently as I withdrew. White light exploded behind my eyes at the sensation. I swore in my ancient language, dropping my head to her shoulder and inhaling as her Fae scent increased with her arousal.

Sookie sobbed softly underneath me and my eyes snapped open. I stilled inside her and looked her in the eye. "I'm hurting you?"

She shook her head violently and wrapped her legs around my thighs, her arms encircling my back. She threw her face into the crook of my neck and whispered, "You're scaring me. You feel so good." And with that, she pressed herself earnestly to me, hugging me.

_Hugging_ me. Not a desperate clutch or a pleasure-drugged wrap, but a hug. It was filled with loving sincerity and I lost my mind to it. She was _loving_ me. I wrapped my arms around her back, drove to the hilt inside her and roared as it felt like-

"Home," I moaned into her hair. "I'm home."

"Yes," she agreed desperately. "More. Please don't stop."

I stroked into a steady pace and pulled back to look at her. "You will give yourself to me every night, do you hear me, Sookie Stackhouse?" My command sounded pleading, even to my own ears. "You will open yourself to me. You will come for me. Just like this, every night. Say it."

I bent and sucked a perfect nipple into my mouth, my fangs grazing along her flesh as my tongue swirled and pulled. I hoped to pull any objection right out of her head by teasing her body. "Yes," I heard above me. "You'll fuck me every night, Eric Northman. I don't care if you want to or not."

I growled in unbridled lust. "Say my name again," I ordered, loving how she sounded now that my cock was buried so happily inside her. "_Moan_ it."

"Eric," she drew out in her pretty little drawl.

"_Again_."

"_Errric_." Even sweeter.

My grip tightened around her. "_My_ name. My dick and my blood inside you, sweet Fae. The shifter, the were, the fucking ex of yours. I'll kill every one of them. They'll never have you. _Never!_"

Her eyes widened and I saw their names flit through her mind. _Sam. Alcide. Compton._ I knew they all loved her. I saw it in their pathetic puppydog glances at her. I knew they all wanted what I had now, this naked angel crying out as I found paradise in her heartbreaking pussy. And I meant it. I planned to rip them apart, as soon as I found the strength to leave her side.

She knew it, too. She pushed me onto my back, never breaking stride, until she was straddling me, increasing our pace. I hissed with pleasure. She kissed me hard, pushing her tongue against my fangs. "Don't you dare," she retorted hotly. Her inner muscles squeezed me in reprimand and I groaned as it delivered the opposite effect. I bucked up in response.

"You're _mine_," I claimed angrily.

"Yes," she peppered baby kisses down my throat. It constricted against such unexpected, loving treatment. "And you cannot kill to keep me, baby. I forbid it."

I ignored how the way she said 'baby' made me shiver with warmth, when it usually irked me when other women used it. "No one forbids me. Not even you."

"You won't kill them," she bit down on my collarbone, emphasizing her point, "or I'll leave you."

I grasped her hips firmly and began fucking her furiously from below. "Never!" I spat.

She cried out and pumped faster, in unison with me. "Then forget them. Forget them and just be with me."

I sat up beneath her. It was time. The thought of other men and the sight of her riding me so enthusiastically drained the last of my patience.

"I want your blood, Sookie. I want you in me."

She looked down into my eyes and smiled in the way I had coveted for so long. Her fingers fanned into my hair. I felt her pleasure as she cradled my head. "Drink from me."

I rumbled my appreciation and buried my face between her stunning breasts. I'd fed from her throat before. I'd fed from her wrist. Now, I wanted it from somewhere far more profound. I bit her breast as delicately as a human would a peach. My lips sealed over the first mouthful of blood and I roared against her. Fang and cock, I was finally, completely sheathed in her. My emotional controls were blown apart as heartrending devotion tore through my being. My beloved sobbed against me, clutching my throat in the cups on her palms.

"_Yes_!" she sobbed into my hair, riding me harder, her release imminent.

And I was drowning in the most delectable flavor a vampire had ever known. The Fae in Sookie was increasing by the second, her taste becoming even sweeter and more harmonious to me. But it was so much more than that. Something was happening. Her blood and her lovemaking were causing fiery fissures in my chest and neck. I locked my arms around her back and yanked her harder against me, drawing deeper from her wound. I felt her core clench tightly and she screamed my name as she came, clutching me tightly by the neck. Light was building in the space between us. In my delirium, I barely saw it. But soon it was as compelling as Sookie's scream and I was blinded by the burst of brilliant energy radiating from her hands on either side of my throat.

"_SOOKIE_!" I bellowed her name and used all of my strength to keep her against me, terrified she had lost control and was blasting me from her arms and into the room next door. I exploded inside her, all of my longing and lust shooting into her eager body as she and I rode out the last of our violent tremors together. Her Light did not repel me. I was too grateful to notice that instead it absorbed under my skin and disappeared into my chest. I gasped and shuddered roughly against her, extremely satisfied that not once had she let go of me.

When our frenzy finally eased, I lifted my head and gazed at her breasts. My bite was trickling slightly. I gently licked her clean and sealed the wound, but I did not let my own blood to heal it. She would keep my mark. To remind her.

I looked up into her face. Her eyes were heavily lidded. She was still breathing faster than normal. She'd gone lax in my arms, limply straddling and holding me close. I brushed my nose against hers. "My angel," I murmured, partly questioning, partly the pure fucking truth.

" 'm okay," she whispered to me. She kissed me in reassurance. We stayed that way awhile. I was happy to just touch her face with mine, scenting her and using our blood bond from the other night to listen to her sated mood.

She was thinking along the same lines. "I didn't drink from you," she noted softly, angling me so that I lay down, bringing her with me.

I smiled very softly. Her eyes lit up more at its presence. "Another time. We will bond soon enough. For now, I am content."

She hummed throatily and shifted closer into my side. "You're warm," she said idly, rubbing my chest and stomach. "Very warm."

I chuckled. "Your blood is magical, lover. As is your tight little pussy. You've thawed me."

She slapped at me and clucked her tongue. "Language, mister. I won't have you talking filthy to me."

I chuckled harder and pulled her head under my lips, kissing her crown hard. "I _am_ filthy, sweet one. You'll have to learn to accept it."

"Humph!" she snorted prettily, lifting her head to look at me. "So when do you cool down? Now that we're finished?"

"Later," I answered. "Blood and sex always warms us. Slightly." It seemed odd she would mention it, given her previous vampire lover. Perhaps I felt warmer than Bill after the act. No matter. I had very little interest in thinking about it. I merely tucked her head back under my chin and splayed my hands wide over her slender back. It wouldn't be long before I needed her again. I may not have lasted anywhere near as long as I'd boasted to her in Fangtasia's basement (she broke my control in a way Yvetta could only dream), but that didn't mean I couldn't recover in minutes. Until then, I would hold her. I would comfort her.

Before this night was through, I would have Sookie in every way imaginable.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N**:

The night wore on and Eric and I grew more and more frustrated. An hour became four. Four hours became an eight-hour shift. We writhed in his bed, wringing each other clean of every conceivable pleasure.

And yet, we were never satisfied.

After our first little rest, we never stopped going at it like rabbits. Eric proved his sinful boast of legendary stamina, coming inside me continuously, and yet needing no recovery time, pumping straight through his orgasm and immediately working himself towards another.

And I was no better. My body begged for rest, my core was aching and sore from his huge and constant presence, and yet I pleaded like a glamoured slut for more.

I begged prettily for him to drink more from me. I hoped that would slake some of my desire for him, as sex seemed to only make it worse. I offered my throat to him. My wrists. My breasts. My thighs. At every offering, he turned his head and refused point blank.

"I must save you," he spoke of me like the last of a coveted wine vintage. "I plan to drink from you every night. I can't take more than you can replenish in that time." With that, he pointedly retracted his fangs from me, removing my beloved heart shape, and resumed fucking my brains out, trying valiantly to sate us the old-fashioned way.

So when I cut my own neck with my nail and brought his lips to the tiny nick, he snarled in displeasure and flipped me so that I was on my hands and knees before him.

"Defiant girl, " he growled angrily, aligning our hips and driving deep into me from behind.

I screamed and drove backwards into him as he thrust manically against my ass.

"You will not tempt me," he rasped darkly. His grip on my hips was steely and possessive. I sobbed at the dizzying pleasure I felt at having no control. I widened my knees on the mattress, wanting him deeper. Always, impossibly deeper.

"You will stay in this position until you've come three times for me," he hissed my punishment.

"I can't," I whimpered. "I'm dying, baby." At least it felt like it. I had no strength left. Even holding my own weight up against his battering hips was proving a wonderful chore.

"You will," he commanded. "Prove to me how much you want me and do as I say."

I hated him. I hated how much I needed him and how bad his words turned me on. And I hated that I did as he bade, needing a full hour to orgasm three times while he howled as my body sucked and squeezed him without mercy. I was given no rest when he withdrew from me. He flipped me again and stood us up, holding my thighs across either of his forearms, splaying my hips wide open just above his pulsing erection. My hands gripped his shoulders, holding me up against him. I moaned in delicious expectation.

"More," he demanded, lowering me gently. Tears pricked my eyes, so I buried them in the crook of his neck as once again my poor body was invaded by a Viking. My exhausted muscles welcomed him weakly. I was so wet for him it was shameful, and he met no resistance as he filled me up until we were fused once again.

I moaned his name in reverence. _How did he do this to me?_

He chose a gentle pace this time, slowly lifting and lowering me, teasing himself with me. He pulled out completely, only to plunge straight down until I could feel his balls nestled tightly against my butt. I had no leverage and no strength, but I managed to flex and clench my inner muscles around him, participating in our lovemaking as best I could. I rubbed my throbbing nipples against his chest and sucked gently on his earlobe. "Beautiful man," I whispered distractedly.

"You are so exquisitely tight, Sookie," he whispered back, lifting and lowering, lifting and lowering. "No woman ever fit me as divinely as you do."

I smirked with smug pride against his cheek and pulled back to kiss his fangless mouth. "Damn right," I murmured. I swirled my hips, bending him in a tight circle, shamelessly coaxing his sharp teeth to come out and play with me.

He felt my intention. "No," he rebuked playfully. "You won't break me, woman."

"Betcha I could," I countered poutingly, swirling him again and again deep inside me. "Betcha a whole dollar I could bring you to your knees."

He laughed and gripped my ass, stopping my circles and starting a more earnest fuck. "Bet you that same dollar I could make you join me," he rasped deeply.

I gave up and clutched his arms, letting him take me harder than before. He was so good at this. So relentless. And we'd barely even ventured into other activities. I was dying to know what he liked, what he'd let me do to him, now that we were lovers. "Will you let me suck you? Do you...enjoy that?" I squeaked. Bill hadn't been particularly crazy about it. I wasn't even sure I was any good at it.

I felt him jolt inside me and he growled deep in his chest. "Would you send me to my true death, then? The sight of you on your knees with my cock in your mouth would surely kill me."

I shivered and arched helplessly into his thrusts, loving his coarse honesty. "I want to," I murmured. "I'd love to. Tomorrow night, maybe?"

His pace quickened further with excitement. "Yes, lover. Anything you want. Dawn is coming now. Shall we come with it?"

I fell bonelessly with him into the abyss, vaguely hearing him roar as he emptied himself deep in my womb for the countless time that night. I held none of my own weight. Thank God for his preternatural strength, because I had absolutely zero.

I felt the bed rush up to meet us. Had he set us there, or simply fallen over? I didn't know. I burrowed into him, unbelievably wanting more, yet physically unable to even lift my head.

Broken, shivering and drained, we fell asleep.

E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S

When I awoke hours later, it was well into late morning and he was dead for the day. No light penetrated the room, but my watch informed me of the fact.

He looked exactly the same as when I'd entered the room an eon ago. Perfect. Untouched. Lying on his back, oblivious to all, like we hadn't destroyed each other for hours in this very bed.

I looked down at my own state of affairs. There were soft bruises on my hips and breasts where he'd held me. I adored them and wished perversely that there were more scattered over my skin. I wondered if that's why he'd chosen not to bond with me immediately. He wanted me to bear his marks, if only for a little while. I was still a seething coil of desire, the lizard part of my brain absolutely furious that he was dormant and had left me feeling like he'd merely teased me with petting and pretty words all night instead of fucking me until I blacked out.

I swore at my lack of satisfaction and kicked my way out of his stupid, silky bed. I found the adjoining bathroom and flicked on the light, instantly caught by my reflection in the entirely-mirrored room. I looked like a wild animal. I smiled a feral smile. The _sexiest_ wild animal alive. I turned this way and that, memorizing every purple grape finger mark, the red outline of his hand high on my ass, the three dozen hickeys starting under my ears and ending on my belly, and of course, his beautiful, prideful mark.

I moved closer and bent over the sink, looking at the bite more closely. For all his ferocity, his bite was downright surgical in care. The pricks were tiny and clean, no tearing at all. He'd managed to hold the both of us perfectly still as he'd fed. Impressive. Bill had often broken the skin around the punctures in his excitement. I guess there was something to be said for being eight hundred years Bill's senior.

I blinked at myself and shook my head in anger. I knew comparisons were inevitable, but they irritated me nonetheless. In pure clinical terms, Eric was a better lover for me. He wasn't restrained. He liked talking to me during the deed. He felt no guilt about what he was, nor any special deference to me for what _I _was. And I liked his crudeness. He liked my tits. He adored my pussy. My blood drove him crazy. I knew all of this because he told me so, and while I don't usually like nasty language, his delivery made me hot nonetheless. He didn't like a quitter, and _made_ me make love to him, pulling out every last string of joy when I was sure there were none left to be had. Even the littlest things, like the way Eric's name rolled off my tongue, felt better. I'd called it often last night, knowing he wanted to hear it, knowing I wanted to say it.

I quickly used the bathroom for reasons other than preening and flushed the toilet. I considered taking a shower, but decided against it. I was the only person in the house, and if I wanted to smell like sex, then I damn well would. Who was here to be scandalized by it? Not a damn soul.

I shot myself one last look in the mirror on the way out before flipping off the light and sliding back into bed. I kissed his sleeping lips and ruffled his hair before latching onto him, arms and legs clinging.

I sighed with happiness. He'd driven me so mad with pleasure that I'd actually shot him with my hand thingies. Thank God I hadn't hurt him. I asked him afterward if I'd done so and he'd shaken his head casually. "I am well," he answered simply. I didn't question it after that, but I was pleased that it didn't happen again. I had no interest in blowing him out of bed, not when he was proving so addictive within it.

On the nightstand, Eric's phone beeped once, indicating he had a message. Curious, I picked it up and read the ID.

PAM, it read. From six hours ago.

I knew it was wrong, but I hit the READ button and felt little remorse doing it.

_Where the fuck, Eric? You better have your ass in here tomorrow night. You KNOW the fangers get antsy when you're not in plain sight. _

_P_

I set his phone back down on the small table.

So. Eric hadn't told Pam he was staying home to meet me. He'd played hooky. For me.

I smiled and snorted softly. My vampire was so darned naughty.

But I found myself responding to the other part of the message in a way that I didn't care for at all. The fangers at his bar, lining up to gawk at his beauty and think raunchy thoughts about the things they wanted him to do to them. Bleed them. Fuck them. Turn them. Kill them. All kinds of bizarre shit that I hated hearing when I entered that place. He didn't need to glamour them, they glamoured themselves just thinking about him.

I snorted again in disgust. And jealousy. Not a ladylike thing to do, I know, but I couldn't help it. I had Eric's word that he would be loyal to me and I trusted him completely for some reason. The way he looked at me, I guess. I knew beyond a doubt that I was the only one he wanted.

Still.

These whores of all description threw themselves at his feet, and for the sake of vampire bar propriety, he let them. He had to. People paid for the privilege of being despised and ignored by him while they drank his eight buck Coors Light.

I lifted my head from his still-warmed chest and looked at him.

So, so unfairly beautiful.

He was even prettier than before. Hair even messier. Face even softer. His stubble was more pronounced. His lips were fuller from my kisses. He looked like he'd died happy, which technically, he had.

And yet, there was nothing of me on him. I know to other vamps, he smelled of me, but to my human senses, he was still a flawless, unmarked statue. I had tried, tried so hard, to mark him in the same way he'd marked me. I'd bitten him. I'd sucked his skin, breaking the capillaries. I'd scratched him. Hell, I'd clawed desperately at him. Every single time, my brand disappeared, his skin zipping back up like it never happened. It was like trying to permanently mark on an Etch A Sketch. It was a fruitless attempt.

He'd felt my disappointment as one of my angrier bruises healed magically on his chest. He had looked down at himself thoughtfully before pulling me flush against him. "I would wear yours if I could, lover."

Somehow, that had made me feel better.

Now, it was unacceptable.

I _would _mark him. He would wake up and see just how thoroughly he belonged to me.

I jumped out of bed and hurried downstairs, naked as a jaybird. I let my sinful side peek out a little and rubbed my naked, sexified body along the walls as I went. Their chilly surfaces made me giggle. I made it to the entryway and picked up my purse where I'd left it on a marble shelf near the door.

I took out my 25th birthday present from Lafayette. I'd never used it. It wasn't my style. At all. But today was an exception. I pulled the lid of the tube of lipstick and swirled it up so I could see.

Bright, tacky, fire engine red greeted me. My preference had always been pink or clear gloss. I smirked and looked at the top of my breast. His punctures, the same color red, had set the bar.

I ran back upstairs (but not before rubbing myself in the soft interior of his leather jacket hanging by the door), flew into his bed and ripped the sheet from his body.

_Mine_, I screamed silently at the pale David laying before me. Staring hungrily at him, I brought the lipstick to my mouth and carefully outlined my lips, coating them generously.

I bent over his face and pressed my lips firmly into his cheek. I kept my mouth firm, wanting the shape to stay defined. I pulled away to check my handiwork. A blood-red Cupid's bow kiss met my appraisal and I laughed loudly at the sight.

It was perfect.

I went to work. I kissed his other cheek. I scattered seven on his throat. I reapplied. I kissed a checkerboard down his chest. I turned his hands in mine and kissed both of his palms. I reapplied. I kissed harder and longer on his stomach. I ran my tongue in the groove that led to his groin. I reapplied. I pushed his legs apart and planted intimate kisses deep along his upper, inner thighs.

I reapplied for the finale.

I took his flaccid penis into my mouth and placed a sound ring all along the base. Still dead to the world, he quivered between my lips.

Savage desire boiled over in me again. He was responding, even in his sleep. I pressed my tongue and cheeks into his soft length and sucked gently.

By the time I'd pulled back to his tip, he was rock hard and pulsing furiously.

"_Yes_, baby," I encouraged excitedly. "Do you like this? Do you want me to keep going?"

He was motionless, but bobbed hotly against my lips. I grinned and took him deep. Oh, dear Lord, it felt sinful. Taking advantage of a man while he slept. I felt like the sweetest little sexual predator as I moaned and sucked and painted the most intimate part of him bright red.

I imagined him awake as I worked him, hissing and growling with need. He was so hard in my mouth that I knew he was close. I released him and whispered to him in his dreams. "Come for me, Eric. Lemme taste you."

A rumble erupted from his chest and his body went rigid on the bed. I took all of him, choking on his girth, humming and sucking with all of my might. He exploded, giving me everything I asked for. I drank him in, not knowing if human men tasted this unbelievably sweet when they ejaculated. I never planned to find out. I continued to nurse him, softer and softer, until he settled down and went still again. I let him slip from my mouth, kissing him chastely on the hip.

"Sweet dreams," I simpered playfully. Oh, I did so hope that he was aware of what happened.

Checking my watch again, I cursed as I read noon. I should get home. I've been meaning to clean my destroyed house for ages now. I really did need to get started before the parish boarded it up. I slipped out of bed again and grabbed my dress. It fell to tatters in my hands. Damn that sexy vampire and his violence against clothes. I crossed the room and opened his closet. In a folded pile were some of his black wife beaters. I pulled one out and tossed it over my head. In the bathroom mirror, I discovered that on a girl my height, the low neckline and racer back tank made me look like townie trash. It barely covered my upper thighs. I never wore black unless someone was dead.

It smelled like his laundry detergent.

That was good enough for me.

I went to his desk and pulled out a paper and pen, planning to leave him a note.

Staring at the blank page, I paused. What do I say? Thank you? I enjoyed myself? Call you later?

I made a face. All of that sounded ridiculous. Eric and I were way passed formalities, and the usual boyfriend/girlfriend sentiments seemed childish compared to what we'd done. We hadn't spent the evening holding hands. I'd spent it discovering that Eric Northman was a shockingly intense and loving man in bed.

I looked over at him for the dozenth time. No. When I looked at Eric, those wooden words did not fit my feelings. Looking at him, I felt breathless with naughty, puckish desire. I liked teasing him. And he was proving to be a _very_ good sport.

I grinned and scribbled down the first thing that came to mind.

I set the note by his phone on the table.

I called a cab.

I went home.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N**: Eric's mega-frustrated POV. You guys continue to amaze with your reviews.

I dreamed of her all day. Torturous, yearning dreams. I would have her in my arms, sweet and yielding and whispering my name, and then the dream would shift and she escaped me. Stranded in a darkness my excellent eyesight could not penetrate, she'd giggle from far away. Impatience gnawed at me. I needed her and she wasn't there.

I called for her over and over. Finally, her lips answered me, but with no words.

Thousands of kisses besieged me. My head tipped back and I groaned in pleasure. I felt no worry about my vulnerable sleeping state. I didn't give a fuck, as a matter of fact. All that mattered was that, in some way, however faint, she was cherishing me.

I lay in the ether, enjoying her attentions from afar.

And then suddenly her attentions became much less innocent.

Suddenly, slick, soft heat enveloped my cock and sucked me within an inch of my undead existence. My mind roared in disbelief and furious pleasure. The sheer _insolence_ of this girl! Fucking a man with her mouth when he had no ability to retaliate.

For the first time in decades, I actively fought against my nocturnality. As my little Fae made love to me with her unbearably soft tongue, I tried to drag myself out of my daily hibernation. The sun pushed back, filling my limbs with lead. My survival instincts treacherously defied my command to back down and let me rise while light was still a threat.

I could not wake. My rage bellowed inside my skull.

Meanwhile, my agitation manifested itself between her lips. I grew harder. I grew desperate. In the impenetrable fog, she whispered to me.

"Come for me, Eric. Lemme taste you."

Saucy, wayward, _wicked_ little fairy.

I obeyed. Goddamn her and her influence over me. I obeyed and came blindingly hard into her irresistible mouth. She held me through my unconscious climax, filling my groin with vibrating approval from her throat. Only when she'd had my last drop did she release me.

"Sweet dreams," I heard softly.

I wondered fleetingly if it was wise to let someone as enslaving as her live. She had too much thrall over me already. I had taken the calculated risk of dying for the day beside her, now she was casting spells over me as I lay helpless. Fae spells. Ones of such strong erotic power that they overcame my strongest resistance.

I was fast becoming…besotted.

It was a serious concern.

But visions of her death nearly broke me in half. The taking of her life was most certainly not an option. No more than turning her was. She wasn't completely of this world, after all. If I turned her and kept her for eternity, I'd lose so many pieces of her that made her Sookie. Her unearthly blood. Her warmth. Her human quirks. Her golden color. Even the very smell of her skin would fade into nothing. It was unacceptable.

Cursing my fortune, I fell back into the black.

E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S

I was warm when I awoke. So much so, that without opening my eyes, my arms went in search of the source of my borrowed temperature.

"Sookie," I murmured by my beloved's name, slithering through the sheets like any cold-blooded creature seeking its basking rock.

I frowned, finding nothing but cold silk.

I opened my eyes and searched the dim room. She wasn't there. I tapped our weak bond and expanded my search.

She wasn't in the house.

She wasn't even in the city.

I found her roughly in the distance of Bon Temps.

My eyes widened. She was gone. _Gonegonegone._

Ugly, angry agitation engulfed me.

I threw back the sheets, reaching for my phone with a full mind to call and rebuke her, when I caught sight of myself and froze.

I blinked. Their vibrant redness was most startling. I sat up slightly to get a better look at them. Slowly—entirely against my own will—I cracked a smile. I fought it. I wished to stay angry, but it yanked at the corners of my mouth until I was grinning outright. My darling hellcat had found a way to lay claim to me. I inhaled and pulled in the smell of cheap lipstick and priceless fairy saliva. I felt absolutely smug with certainty that never, ever had she pulled this stunt with…the other vampire in her life.

Catching sight of my cock, I snarled with exasperation. My dream that wasn't a dream came flooding back to me. She'd blown me. She'd fucking blown my brains out and she'd done so while I was in no state to fully appreciate her ministrations. I could still feel her there, pulling and teasing my immobile anatomy and sighing with pleasure when she forced my climax out of me.

It sprang back to life at the memory, pulsing so hotly that I gasped.

I groped for my phone. She'd answer for this. My hand struck a piece of paper instead and I snatched it up and brought it level to my gaze.

_I've counted them. If any are missing next time I see you, I'll never have sex with you again. _

_P.S. Pam is seriously pissed at you. You better check in.  
P.P.S. Thanks for breakfast in bed. You taste better than pancakes. _

_~S  
_

I roared with frustration. How dare she leave me like this!

My body was covered in kisses, my cock had been sucked by an angel, and everything was saturated in the addictive smell of a Fae in heat.

And there wasn't a goddamn thing I could do about it.

I was throbbing. Desperate. I needed her. I needed her so fucking bad. My attempts to clear my head by bedding her last night had backfired horribly and I was worse off than ever before. I was not sated, I was hooked.

And then she had the audacity to cocktease me in my sleep, then leave me. Just fucking leave me!

Oh, when I got my hands on that girl...

My eyes rolled and I gripped my aching cock. _When I got my hands on that girl._ I gave myself one stiff squeeze, a tiny respite, before I let go. Yes. I had many plans for when I caught her. All that sunkissed skin and loving heat. And _when _I caught her, she could bet that I'd take my time. But in the meantime, I wasn't about to give her the satisfaction of jerking off mere hours after I'd had her. She wouldn't break me that easily. I was ancient. I had more control than that.

Quickly, I got out of bed and scanned myself in the mirror. One hundred and thirty-seven. My lover had marked me exactly 137 times. I dressed carefully. I knew my clothing would smear many of their lovely shapes, but it couldn't be helped. I chose a t-shirt to cover most of them, and I regretfully washed my cheeks, neck and hands of the eleven that she had placed there. I didn't want to, but I needed to see Pam and I wasn't about to let her see how tolerant I was of my new human's mischief making.

As I tried to leave my home, I had to stop several times. She hadn't just passed through these halls. She'd fondled them. She'd outright molested them. I threw myself against the walls, inhaling deeply, cursing her name as I throbbed hotly behind my zipper. She'd been happy when she'd pressed herself into them. Her scent invisibly sparkled with desire and naughtiness. She clearly had no idea how reckless it was to torture me like this. My longing to hold her was so great that, were she here now, I'd have feared for her safety.

I made it to my front door and grabbed my coat. It sang with her scent and I nearly screamed. I wouldn't be free of her, even away from these walls. She'd run herself across every inch of the leather, driving me mad with the ghost of her lust. I wanted to tear the damn thing into pieces, venting my frustration since I couldn't act on my impulse to fuck her blind. Cursing again, I shoved myself into it. As badly as she tested me, it was better to live with her sweet torture than not.

I flew off. Pam and I had to speak. I landed at Fangtasia at eight and entered through the employee door.

She was behind the bar stocking bottles when I entered. She felt me arrive and turned, irritation radiating off of her.

"Where the hell have you been? You didn't think to call and tell me you weren't—,"

She froze. She inhaled sharply.

I held my ground and waited. My scent was now mixed with a potent aphrodisiac. Fae blood rolled through my body. Fae sex coated my skin. Even at their most unwilling and enraged, fairy scent narcotized even the oldest vampire. Sookie had been aroused and fired up, her scent made all the sweeter with her consent.

Pam's chin tilted and her fangs dropped. "Where is she?"

I moved forward and threatened her with my most chilling gaze. "Retract them or I'll rip them out."

"Sookie," she purred, looking me up and down in a way that Pam never appraised men. "You've had her, then. You've had every luscious inch of her."

"Pam," I growled low. "She is mine. You will obey me and concede."

Her eyes were hazy. I wasn't completely sure she had heard me, much less heeded me.

"Say it," I ordered.

She blinked and retracted her fangs regretfully. "Sookie is yours," she acknowledged.

I nodded and uncoiled myself. I rarely struck Pam. It had been ages, in fact. But that didn't mean I wasn't prepared to beat her half to death to get her to submit to my wishes. In this case, my human was not to be passed around.

She huffed in annoyance. "Your willpower is commendable. How did you enjoy her without killing her?"

"This is not up for discussion. She is mine and she is protected. That's all you need to know."

"But her _scent_," she whispered reverently, leaning towards me to sniff. "I want to lick you clean. Even Compton didn't smell this delicious with her."

Jealousy and victory rose up in my throat. Pam was right. Compton may have smelled of Sookie, but her scent had not dazzled us to the point of distraction when he walked in. I leered in triumph. Her scent on _me _was pure siren song.

"Get your own fucking Fae, Pam," I warned. "You will _not _covet mine."

She huffed again and gave up. "Very well. Miser."

She turned away from me and picked up a ledger by the till, tossing it to me. "The week's takings. You also need to choose a replacement for Yvetta."

I caught the book easily. At the mention of the dancer, I shrugged indifferently. "Put out an ad. Choose whomever you like."

She looked at me quizzically. "You always choose."

My apathy was palpable. I had Sookie now. I didn't give a fuck about potential meals with slim legs and passable talents on a pole. "You have shares in this bar. It's your turn. Select some AB negative tart with decent tits. Treat yourself."

My evasion didn't fool her. Perhaps I shouldn't have chosen so shrewd a progeny. She inhaled again and struck at my unspoken worry.

"You've agreed to some girlish, ridiculous request for monogamy, haven't you? You're infatuated with her."

"Silence, Pam."

"Oh, I don't _believe_ it." Her voice dripped with distaste. She put her hands on her hips and rolled her eyes at the ceiling. "Seriously, Eric? Is her blood that emasculating? Does the moon rise from her cunt?"

I sent her flying across the room and into a wall. "_Silence_!"

She didn't yield. "And what of your reputation? You have duties. Will this become a habit? You being so entranced by her that you forget everything else?" She fearlessly stood her ground. "You belong here, Eric, not dick-deep in a tinkerbell every single night."

I had her by the throat in a flash. "Where I put my dick is none of your concern."

We stared at each other, child and maker, for several seconds.

Her face softened. "You misunderstand me. I'm pleased you're happy, even with such an odd creature as Sookie. Just don't lose yourself in her. I won't have you turn into Compton."

I released her and cupped her cheeks affectionately. "I am not weak, dear one. I've wanted this Fae for a long time. I plan to savor my possession of her. But I'll never succumb to her like a sickness, Pam. You have my word."

She smiled wanly and turned her lips into my palm, kissing it loyally. "She is rare, your tickerbell," she granted. "I'm glad she has submitted to you."

I smiled indulgently. "She needs me. She desires me. She is better off with us."

Pam nodded. Of course she was. Compton was a hair above useless. Pam and I were formidable enemies against those who would threaten my Fae.

Pam removed herself from my hands and sashayed over to a barstool, taking a seat. "Your acquisition has a heavy price tag. We have no way of knowing how many people are aware of her now. She could be captured and sold. She could be annexed by any monarch or the Magister. Or she could simply be killed to provoke you. Weres have been sighted in the woods near Bon Temps. No one knows whom they work for. And new vamps were in here last night. I wasn't able to watch them properly. The humans were too distressed about your absence. Their behavior was irritating. And they stink of cat piss when they're unhappy."

She eyed me ruefully.

I chuckled. "I'll be here tonight. Sookie has foolishly gone home. I need to secure her. But I'll be back at eleven. Circulate rumors that I'm out hunting."

She snorted and I flashed my blunt teeth. "That always gets them excited."

She bowed her head in acceptance. "Tell Sookie that I honor your claim. I will protect her in your name, should the circumstance arise."

I inclined my head in the ancient signal of approval. "You are precious to me, Pam. There will never be a better child than you."

She took my words in pleased silence as I turned for the door.

It was true, my Fae did need protecting. But more than that, my Fae needed to be fucked until I split her in half in retribution for her taunting desertion. She needed to learn she wasn't safe when she wasn't with me. She needed to learn that she wasn't allowed to leave when I wasn't fucking finished with her. Her blood and pussy were my property, she had no business endangering them.

So, so many lessons I had to reinforce, and I needed to teach them while pumping into her delectable body and getting drunk on her screams.

I flew off again, filling my head with these visions, ignoring the niggling fact that what I wanted most of all was her smile.


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N:** Sookie's equally annoyed POV. They're freakin' Mozarts when it comes to rubbing each other the wrong way.

_The effing nerve of that haughty, arrogant bastard!_

My cab pulled up to my house around one o'clock and I stared open-mouthed at a residence I'd never seen before. What the eff had _happened_? Why the hell was my house so white? Why was the yard manicured like a damn topiary garden? What the hell was all that electric fencing doing around the property?

The windows gleamed. There were reinforced shutters swept discreetly to the side of each of them. The porch looked brand new. And my driveway hadn't simply been graveled. It had been paved with fast-drying cement.

I stepped out in a daze, looking over every single addition to the exterior. None of them were incomplete. Every last one had been finished, even the fencing. I had only been gone 24 hours. It must have taken over 40 people to complete a job this size in so little time.

"Ma'am?"

The sound of my driver startled me and I jumped.

"Oh, right. Sorry." I fished into my purse and gave him two day's worth of tips to cover my fare. He took it and gave me one last lingering look before getting back into the driver's seat. I really couldn't blame him. Mine must have looked like one of the sorrier walks of shame he's ever had to take home. My dress was a man's tank top. I had bruises everywhere. I'd left a fancy mansion and came home to a simple clapboard. I clearly had been worked over by an amorous millionaire. Thank God he couldn't see my bite. That was a piece of mercy.

He took off down my fancy new drive and I turned back to curse the name of the Mr. High-and-Mighty who thought he could renovate my ancestral home without so much as a by-your-leave.

I stomped up the steps (no more creaking) and stabbed my key in the lock. There was a new Kryptonite deadbolt, unlocked to let me in, installed. There was a thick piece of cardstock taped to it, a formal script that I was quickly becoming familiar with across it.

_I look forward to your melodramatic indignation. _

_~Eric_

Oh, he was in some _serious_ trouble.

I waltzed through my front door and skittered to a halt. My anger took a serious hit, but still managed to hold on.

My house was beautiful. Sun pattered through the windows and alighted on spotless surfaces as far as the eye could see. My unbroken furniture sparkled with polish and wet vac treatment. My unsalvageable pieces were replaced with thoughtful substitutes. I could eat off my floors. I would see myself in the waxed wood steps. Nothing had been overtly updated, not to the eye anyway. I noticed my taps and water fixtures, while similar, were all new. As was the water heater in the kitchen.

I went upstairs. My room looked like it had been serviced by a loving maid who'd known me for years. Everything was perfect, just as I would want it. My things had been cleaned and arranged, but nothing felt violating. I went into Gran's room and nearly sobbed. Maryann had been particularly cruel to this room. I'd had trouble setting foot in here since the night of her wedding. So many of my Gran's lovely things had been crushed and repurposed for that bitch's unholy ritual. Had she dug up my Gran's body and spat on it, she could not have raped her memory more.

Except for a few knickknacks and old perfume bottles that had been smashed to pieces, the room looked fully restored. Even her unfinished knitting project—the one Tara had clawed at—had been cleaned and carefully set back into a chair. The pristine bed was made with the quilts I thought had been ruined beyond hope. The clothing was drycleaned and hanging up in the open wardrobe.

My memories of Gran in this room were no longer tainted with guilty sadness.

Eric had fixed them.

I launched myself onto her bed and had a decent cry into her pillow. It didn't smell much of her anymore, but that didn't matter. Her ghost was happy. That was enough.

I cried for a long time. It started out in mourning for Gran and gratitude to Eric, but after a while, I realized that the gratitude wasn't really that at all.

I was crying because I was terrified. I was terrified because I knew right then that I loved Eric Northman. It was so violent and carnal and consuming that it would have been easy for me to write it off as lust. So easy, in fact, that that's exactly how I'd been regarding it for a long time now.

But this was _Gran's_ room. My vampire was violent and carnal and consuming, no denying it, but with me, _for _me, he gentled. He cared. He became soft and thoughtful and so damned _soulful_ that it hurt just to look him in the eye.

And I loved him.

No one ever accused me of smarts.

Sniffling back my tears, I got up and headed for the shower. When I was clean and dry, and dressed in his wife beater again. I didn't have work and I wasn't expecting guests, so why not? I wanted a piece of him close to me.

I wandered back downstairs and grabbed some late lunch. When I finished, I was drawn to a spanking new sheepskin rug in front of the fireplace. Its lovely, long white wool called to me, so I stretched out on its fluffy, soft length. It felt wonderful against my bare arms and legs. Next to the fire, I was amused to find kitty Eric curled up in a new cat bed. _Eric_ was embroidered in the plush cushion under his front feet. I laughed and revived some of my original exasperation. The _effing _nerve of him, really. Why had I fallen for such an insufferable jerk?

I sighed and closed my eyes.

I hadn't slept, after all.

E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S

I dreamt.

Or so it began with dreaming. And of course, I dreamt of him. I found him lying on his back, looking tousled and happy, arching his brow at me playfully.

"I _told_ you that you had feelings for me," he gloated. "You should listen to me more often."

I wanted to crawl up his prone body, slap him, then kiss him, but he disappeared before I could do anything.

"Just ask them," he called from far away.

"Ask who?" I called back, but he was gone.

The dream shifted and suddenly I wasn't alone. I wasn't dreaming either, I knew that for sure.

I had visitors.

"_Sookie." _

My blood tingled. My hands and eyes warmed considerably. I looked for a door, for that sweet, golden light that told me I was in Faery, but no porthole or light penetrated my mind. And yet, it was a Fae voice. No doubt about it.

"I'm here," I called back. "Where are you?"

"_Close. Always close. Are you well?"_

I smiled wanly. "Well enough, I suppose. What brings you to my head?"

"_We have felt a shift in the vampire world."_

I nodded. "Yeah, I know. They're after me. I don't know if it's the King of Mississippi's people, or Sophie Anne's, or what. But I'm working on it. I have help."

There was a pause.

"_That is not the shift of which we speak." _

I frowned. "No? Then what shift are you talking about?"

Another brief pause. _"The vampire Eric Northman. He was Chosen. The shift is his." _

My frown deepened. "I don't understand."

I strained to see in the dark of my own head, trying to find their meaning. What kind of shift are we talking about here? Who's chosen Eric, and for what?

"_You have Chosen,"_ they restated. _"The shift was your wish."_

"Okay," I said, "Back up a second. What are you talking about? Is this because me and him—," I paused and looked for a delicate phrase, "—had…relations?"

"_No. Your sexual encounter with him is irrelevant." _

I gulped and felt my unconscious self turn red. "Are you talking about him bonding to me?"

"_We care not for vampire bonds. They are immaterial,"_ they replied dryly.

"Then what are you talking about? What happened?" I asked with growing impatience.

"_You have Chosen your companion. You have Chosen Eric Northman. He is yours." _

"Yeah, I know," I answered. "I need his help. I've chosen another vampire. So then why didn't you feel this shift when I chose Bill? You attacked him when he entered Faery."

I felt anger at Bill's name ripple from their direction. _"You did not Choose the vampire Bill Compton. You have Chosen Eric Northman. He is yours." _

"Of course I did! I _loved_ Bill. I chose him as well." I paused and considered what the difference might be. "Does this have to do with the light thingies in my hands? Is that why Eric wasn't hurt when I shot him?"

"_You did not shoot him. You Chose him. He consented. He is your mate by Choice." _

_I am yours, then. Only yours._ Eric's words filtered through me, filling me with warmth and pleasure.

"I don't understand," I repeated, feeling more desperate. "We...we're not bonded. I haven't blood bonded permanently with him yet. Just the once."

Their voice became condescending. _"To bond in blood is the vampire way. Faes bond in light." _

"So then…what does a Fae bond do?"

That damn mystic pause again. _"Eric is yours." _

"I get that. What does that mean? What does the light do to him? And why is he warm? Is he becoming human or something?"

"_No. A vampire can never revert. He is dead. He will remain so." _

It hurt to hear such a clipped confirmation of his unlife. "So? Why is he warm?"

"_He is Lit from within. The Chosen of a Fae must be prepared."_

"Prepared for what? What are we supposed to do?"

I sensed frustration from them. _"The what is not important. He must be prepared for anything by your side. Since you have Chosen to mate with a vampire, he has been gifted accordingly." _

I swallowed. "Gifted?"

"_Yes,"_ the affirmed. _"Your mate must stay at your side."_ There was another endless pause and I opened my mouth to question, but they continued and chilled my very blood.

"_Whether in light or in darkness."_

And with that, they were gone.

E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S

When I awoke it was already night. I'd slept much longer than I'd intended.

I sat up on my fluffy new rug and stretched my arms up. Kitty Eric hadn't moved a muscle. Lazy critter. I petted him briefly and he purred all of three seconds before slipping to sleep again.

My house was dark. I felt lonely and worried about all the nasty beasts out there looking for me. And I wanted Eric. Annoyingly, I felt much safer and happier with him in my sight. But I brushed it off. He was a busy vampire and had other duties he had to attend. I had no interest in getting on Pam's bad side by bogarting her maker. And he had obviously done all kinds of trench warfare things to my house to keep me safe, so I had no cause to complain.

His rumbling laughter echoed in my mind. It was stupid to pretend I only wanted him because he was protecting me. Not when that laugh curled my very toes.

"Knock it off," I chastised myself aloud. "Make dinner or something."

I was about to get up and head into the kitchen when our bond struck me like a bat. I gasped. He was coming. He was close. And he was so enraged about something that adrenaline spiked my heart.

I had no time to think. My door crashed open and I screamed at the sound.

Eric loomed in the doorway, tall and beautiful and with utter madness rolling off of him. His head was dropped like an attack dog. His eyes and fangs glittered in the dark.

"_You_," he growled low.

I was on my feet in an instant. My Fae blood boiled in recognition of an ancient enemy. My _heart_ stopped in recognition of my lover. My hands lit up like lightbulbs. Fighting or fucking, I was ready for him.

He was fully dressed and reaching for his belt buckle in the doorway when I blinked. Then he was gloriously naked and standing in my personal space. I never saw him move.

Instinctively, I put my glowing hands on his red-kissed chest. Light exploded against his skin and he snapped his head back, roaring at a terrible decibel. Once again, my light did not send him flying and instead sank quickly into his body.

_You have Chosen Eric. He is—_

"Mine," I hissed at him possessively.

His hands were lifting his borrowed shirt off of me, stripping me bare.

He dragged me down to the rug, yanking my knees to either side of his head as I lay on top of him. His glorious erection pulsed angrily in front of me. My mouth watered at the sight. I felt him grip my thighs and growl ferociously. "Suck me. Now."

And with that, he bit deeply into my inner thigh. I screamed in exquisite pain and immediately swallowed him whole. We sucked each other madly, me on his shaft, him on my femoral artery. I climaxed instantly, sobbing around his girth, trembling and bucking savagely as I continued to swirl my tongue around his warm, satiny skin.

"You dare to blow me in my sleep?" he snarled furiously, sucking on me harder. "You rub yourself like a bitch in heat on my furniture?" I sobbed in delight. It scared me, how his frightful words made me feel so powerful.

He petted me along my wet folds with a single finger. "You _dare_ to leave my bed after marking me like a wanton whore?"

I sucked him hard and nodded, every _inch_ the wanton whore.

He released my thigh and drove his tongue into my dripping core, mixing a cocktail of my blood and lubrication in his mouth. I cried out helplessly against the pleasure. I redoubled my efforts to please him in turn by rubbing him against my soft inner cheek.

"You have no right to taste this good," he accused softly, his fangs retracting loudly in consideration to my tender, sensitive flesh. He licked and suckled at me and my heart broke at his sweetness. "You have _no_ right to be this wet and ready when I'm not here."

"I couldn't help it," I whimpered pathetically. "I was dreaming of you."

"Every vampire nearby can smell you," he hissed lovingly. "They know there's a beautiful honey pot dying for a fuck inside this house."

"No," I retorted hotly, nursing his tip with the gentlest care. "Dying for _you_. Only for you."

He didn't last long. Soon he was bellowing beneath me and filling my mouth. I swallowed every drop, too greedy to let any escape. He quickly pulled out from my lips and flipped me under him, his still-steely shaft ready for more. My letter opener from the coffee table appeared out of nowhere in his hand. I cried out in alarm when he sank it two inches into his neck. Dark blood spilled over his collarbone. He drew my head to his wound and murmured. "Drink from me, lover."

I pressed my lips into his blood. His bit shallowly into my shoulder. He slipped into my throbbing, overheated core.

Our second blood bond. Our second mating. We screamed at their consummation.

His blood shot fire through my veins and immediately healed my bruises from the night before. My poor, overworked pussy reactivated with new vigor. It clenched him even tighter, its previous soreness obliterated. I hooked my ankles around the small of his back, feeling complete after a day of wanting to kill him.

Our hips locked together. We couldn't part if we'd tried.

He shuddered all around me, cleaning my small shoulder wound. It was healing anyway, he merely liked taking care of it. Thrusting very gently between my thighs, he lifted his face to mine and kissed me with so much tenderness that I whimpered into his mouth.

"The things you do to me, Sookie Stackhouse," he rasped against my lips. "I fear for my sanity."

I gave him a watery smile and caressed his face, mapping every single detail. "I missed you, too."

His fangs were out again. I leaned up and captured one of them between my lips. I sucked it slowly, in time to his thrusts. He purred in approval and I smiled, nicking my lip in the process.

"Kiss and make it better?" I asked him sweetly. He chuckled and complied, kissing the cut, cleaning it just as it closed.

Something powerful overtook me and I clung to him with all of my might. "What's happening to us?"

His arms banded around my back and he pulled me up into him, plastering me to his red-smeared chest. "I don't know. But I won't let it stop."

I wrapped my arms around his neck and held him, moving my hips in languid tempo with his. Feeling so happy, so full, I couldn't help but smile impishly at his clean cheeks and neck. "You're missing some kisses on you, mister."

His body rumbled with throaty laughter and he pulled back to bite me playfully. "You may punish me, then. Any way you wish. Except abstinence, as you threatened."

I giggled and palmed my healed breasts for his inspection. "Mine are gone, too. I guess I'll let it slide."

He hitched my legs up higher and drove deeper, making me spasm and gasp his name. He kissed me everywhere he could reach, never piercing my skin, adhering to his vow never to take more blood than I could spare in 24 hours.

His head was lowered to my chest, so I placed a crown of kisses into his hairline. "Won't you get bored with just mine?" I asked, meaning my blood. "Are you sure you want to refuse everyone else?"

I didn't want him drinking from others. The idea made me wild with jealousy. But I had to know. I simply couldn't believe I was enough to make him go cold turkey.

He looked up at me, eyes incredulous. "Have I not made it clear? Your blood is unique, lover. None have ever compared. There isn't a vampire in the world who wouldn't throw themselves at your feet to possess you as I do. The oldest and strongest would beg like children. They'd give you anything. Anything you wanted."

I arched under his body, crooning softly as he drove me higher towards release. He gripped me tightly and whispered into my throat. "And yet, you chose me."

The voices of the Fae resounded through my head again. _Eric is yours._

"Yes," I reassured him, holding him closer just as he held me. "I Choose you. My _precious _Viking," I smiled, invoking the words of Russell.

He caught them and chuckled, flipping us so that I was on top. "My beautiful Fae," he rasped hotly. "You ever leave my bed again and you'll see how a Viking truly behaves."

I sat up on him and picked up our pace, pressing him as deep inside me as possible. He gripped my hips and held me fast, thrusting upwards in response. I arched again, pushing my breasts out pertly.

"You're not the bossa me," I replied snootily. "I came home to clean up and what do I find? A would-be sugar daddy up and barged in here and scoured the whole damn place."

He hissed aggressively, smiling like a predator through his fangs. His pace increased and I moaned, my core stretching to capacity around his swelling excitement. "And what of _my_ house, little hellcat?" he purred provokingly. "Am I to be driven insane every time I pass through the rooms you fucked?"

It was a fair point. I had fucked his house with the express purpose of driving him crazy.

Still, I didn't want to concede, so I closed my eyes and moaned his name in the sweetest voice I could muster. I sank my nails into his chest and begged him.

"Show me how insane I drive you."

It worked. He snarled greedily and began to fuck me hard.

"Yes!" I keened loudly. "Show me. Oh God, Eric. Please. Show me."

"Addictive creature," he spat angrily, pumping madly as I pleaded for more. "I despise how much I need you."

"I know," I cried, slumping forward, letting him carry us to the brink. "I love you. I _hate_ that you've made me love you."

I hadn't heard myself. I was too busy coming so hard against him that I screamed at the top of my lungs.

But he heard me.

He stiffened against me and shouted my name so loudly that it hurt my ears. I felt him jet hotly inside of me, pouring every ounce of himself into my swollen, starving flesh.

I collapsed on him, moving my hips to prolong our pleasure. Sweating and borderline delirious, I placed invisible kisses where my painted ones had been that morning. He was even warmer than before. My blood. My body. And—I knew now—my light. He was as warm and irresistible as fresh bread.

I nuzzled more tightly into him and sighed, satisfied for the moment. I knew it wouldn't stay that way for long.

"Can you stay the night?" I asked hazily.

Regret rippled through our strengthened bond. "I cannot. I promised Pam I would return at eleven."

It was already nine thirty. I sighed in disappointment. "I understand."

His arms were around me. For the first time, I enjoyed the novelty of receiving warmth from all directions in a vampire's embrace. He stroked my back, tenderly holding me against him.

"I don't wish to," he admitted quietly.

"You need to, though," I showed my gracious side. "You're too important to laze around all night with me, baby."

He snorted in amusement. "Don't tempt me, woman."

I smiled and lifted my head to regard him. "What time do ya'll close?"

"Three o'clock."

I pulled a resolute breath. "Will you do me a favor? Will you come back to me after three?"

He cocked his head and moved to massage my shoulder blades. They disappeared under his large hands. "Why? Did I not sate you properly just now?"

I grinned and smacked his cheek softly. "Hush with that. No, I…" I stopped and my grin slipped a little. "…I want to check something."

He didn't appear skeptical, exactly. More like curious with a speck of suspicion. "Dawn will come soon after. Are you asking me to die here during the day?"

The hand I smacked him with was now sliding deep into his soft hair. His eyes closed briefly. Like kitty Eric, he enjoyed when I pet him.

"If I'm right about something, then I'm pretty sure you won't have to."


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N**: Eric's POV. Here's lemon in your eye.

I made love to her three more times before I dragged myself away from her.

I had to.

I knew I should have held off and spoken to her about more important things, like her request, like my warnings about strangers with candy out in her woods, but my willpower had been stomped to death the moment I'd flown into the city limits.

I'd taken a serious hit when I was a mile away from her house. Slicing through the air at my usual speed, my senses were suddenly assaulted and I lost my concentration.

I regrouped and took a disbelieving inhalation.

Sookie was in the air. And she was pure sugar. She nearly had me falling from the sky as surely as if she'd shot me down with a missile.

I knew from our quiet bond that she was probably sleeping, but at the same time, she was horny as hell and broadcasting that she desperately needed me to come and take care of it. Unfortunately, she was also letting every supe in Louisiana know that the most irresistible woman in the world needed to be fucked.

My instincts responded without me. I broke the sound barrier getting to her house and nearly blew it down in my fury to get to her.

And then she stole whatever was left of my soul.

She'd been sleeping on the rug I'd chosen specifically for making love to her. I could smell how wet she was when she leapt to her feet. One of my shirts hung provocatively from her shoulders. Bruises dusted her skin from last night. Upon seeing me, her pupils ate her irises and her hands lit up in a way that my vampire instincts recognized as hostile Fae posture.

The fact that she was geared up to fight me made my bloodlust howl with delight. She was welcome to resist me if she wanted, but I was going to win and I was going to take my spoils on that very rug when I did.

I really should know better by now. My Fae will never bore me with predictability.

She shot me again. And again my body absorbed her Light and I felt crushed as my desire for violence was tempered by a frightening need to devote my entire being to Sookie's happiness.

"Mine," she whispered over my scream, and I knew I'd wisely chosen my equal.

I took her. Hard. Just as she took me.

Only as we lay in the afterglow were we finally able to speak rationally.

She curled up on top of me, locking me inside of her as she did so.

I chuckled. "Do you want more?" I asked, rolling myself inside her.

She shook her head lazily. "Not yet. But you can't leave, either."

I nodded and cupped her flawless ass, bearing her down until she had all of me. "Then I won't." She made a little squeak of effort. She was still conspicuously snug for me. She was still getting used to me, even when we lay quietly.

"Tell me more about this dream," I said, looking for a distraction from that alluring fact.

I felt her fingertip idly explore the shell of my ear. "It wasn't a dream. My people came to me again. They said they felt a shift in the vampire world."

I tilted my head, encouraging her finger. "And the shift was ours, you say. That we have connected somehow."

She nodded under my chin. "More than a connection. They say we've bonded. That since I've Chosen you and you've consented to it, we are now bonded in the Faery way."

I smiled indulgently. "Am I to grow wings and trail glitter?"

"Shut up, buster. This is serious."

I turned _very_ serious when I considered an ugly possibility. "Did you share this Light with Compton?"

"No," she clung to me jealously. "Thank God."

I relaxed under her and she in turn softened her grip. I did not speak of my intention to butcher him if that had been the case. I couldn't bear the thought of my fairy parting her extraordinary favors to such a pedestrian vampire as Compton. He wasn't worth it. I struggled to think of a single creature outside of myself who was.

I moved back to our discussion.

"Tell me your thoughts, lover. What has you feeling so anxious?"

Our second blood bond had given me greater access to her feelings and right now she was equal parts of contentment, desire and worry. Selfish as I am, I gloated brashly. I felt spoiled rotten that all of those emotions revolved around me.

She continued. "It's the Light. I keep shooting you with it, but it's not the usual fairy WMD kind of light. It's not a weapon. They said it was a gift. That you need to be prepared and my Light was a gift."

I thought of my promise to her our first night together. I would not keep her in the dark. I felt exposed as I mused out loud to her. I wasn't used to showing my hand. "I feel differently," I admitted. "Nothing extreme, but I am obviously warmer, and when you shoot me, I immediately feel compelled towards you. More than I can explain in words."

Her head lifted and I met her gaze. I volunteered another piece of information I'd just as soon keep secret. "When I'm with you, my attachment to you rivals that which I had for Godric."

Sookie expelled a disbelieving burst of air. She understood the severity of such a statement and I was pleased. I felt treacherous even thinking such a thing. She did not smile. She cupped my cheek and reciprocated. "When I'm with you, I can't see anything else. The love I had for Bill, even Gran, they don't compare to what I feel for you."

She didn't say that she loved me again, exactly. I didn't press. I considered the possibility that I had torn the sentiment from her before she was willing to tell me. I also knew that humans often misspoke during copulation, mistaking biological lust for emotional regard. I didn't, however, put much stock in the second option. Sookie had sounded to angry and annoyed at her declaration. I _made_ her love me, she'd said. That was hardly a throwaway comment. Indeed, it sounded perfectly tailored, fitting every bizarre angle of our relationship.

That meant I had her love. More than she'd given to her dearest family.

I lifted my head and nuzzled her face. "Little angel," I grunted softly. "I don't believe in your god, but if he does exist, he will forgive all my sins, simply for having lain in your arms."

Her side of our bond melted and she smiled, kissing my nose. "I doubt I have that much sway with Him. But I do believe he sent Godric to immortalize you so that I could have you a thousand years later."

"Are you saying I was made for you, Sookie?" I asked teasingly.

She nodded, smiling against my mouth and pecking it chastely. "Once by God, once by Godric. You were made _twice_ just for me."

I liked the idea. As did my cock. It was growing impatient, even as it lay nestled deep in its rightful place. I rocked her experimentally. She closed her eyes, arching in my hands.

"What happens at dawn, lover?" I whispered, moving her slowly.

Her locked her knees to the floor, using the leverage to lift up and down on my hips. Fucking hell, she contracted around me like a virgin. My fangs dropped. I forgot my question.

"I wish I'd found you years ago," I whispered regretfully. "I could have had this for the last decade."

She chuckled, concentrating on her rhythm. "I would have been sixteen. Pervert."

I groaned, moving with her a fraction more. "The perfect age to teach you. I would have spent months on you, opening you up slowly. I would have spent hours simply licking your skin in amazement."

I flipped us again. It was too much to imagine such a past while looking into her deliciously scandalized expression. I turned her on her belly, legs together, and holding all of my weight above her, slid into her from behind until the sweet globes of her ass filled the curve of my hips.

She moaned, turning her face to one side, her hands pressing into the soft rug beneath us, but not raising herself. Her closed thighs intensified the tightness of her pussy. I kept myself in a pushup position and began to thrust unrelentingly.

"You wouldn't have been ready for this," I hissed, forcing myself deep into my lover's scorching heat. "I would have had to be patient. Coaxing your thighs apart, deflowering you with my mouth, adjusting you until you could accept me fully."

Sookie made a sound of acute longing and tried to rise to her hands and knees, but I held her flat. "Feel the drag of the wool on your tits as I take you," I instructed into her ear. "Enjoy your submission to me."

"Bastard," she cursed softly. "I fucking hate you."

"You fucking _love_ me," I forgot myself in the thrill of goading her. "You love every inch of me, Sookie. Don't you?"

I grabbed her hands and trapped them flat under mine. She was pinned in three places, crucified to the floor and wailing in ecstasy as I pumped harder.

"And you would have loved me then, too," I spoke of her teenage self. "First, I'd slip a single finger inside you. I would have taught you to ride it without pain, to enjoy a man's presence until you came against my hand."

Sookie whimpered my name, raising her hips under my assault and asking for more as I pounded harder still. "Many nights later, I'd add a second, working you slowly, lover. And when you could finally take three, I would have opened you wide, replaced them with my dick, and taken your first fuck."

She cried out, coming hard and squeezing me like a vise. I didn't relent. I didn't even slow down.

"That's right," I hissed. "I would have had you every night. My own little Lolita. You would have known no other man. And after I'd taken you a thousand times until you fit me just as you do now," I leaned down and bit her neck with my blunt, human teeth, "I would have started all over again with your tight, virgin ass."

She screamed beneath me, coming again, even harder than she had mere seconds ago. I came with her, the images I'd created too unbearable to take any longer.

She shuddered and sobbed quietly, riding out the last of her climax. I released her hands from under mine and scattered dozens of soothing kisses down her back, withdrawing carefully as I went. Such a fearless, fragile little thing, my Sookie.

"Made for me," I murmured against her spine.

She shivered against my lips and I worried that I'd genuinely upset her. I tapped our bond. I was dismayed to find regret in her. I caged her from behind, willing comfort into her.

"I wish you'd been my first," she said, burying her face into her forearms.

I immediately rolled her and swallowed her up in my arms. "I prefer that I'm your last," I replied hotly.

She strangled my neck with her desperate little arms and I loosed my loudest purr, communicating my contentment. The motoring sounds made her smile against my shoulder. I nuzzled my face into her hair.

I had promised to be honest with her.

"I love you," I admitted. "If what I felt for Godric was love, then I love you. More than anything."

She molded her whole body to me, still shivering despite our twin warmth. "Come to me after three," she repeated softly. "I'm going to _show_ you how much I love you."

E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S

I took her twice more before ten thirty showed its cruel face.

She was so pliant and happy that leaving her side felt like an amputation by silver. The pain almost blinded me.

Still beautifully nude, she laughingly shoved me back into my clothes, smoothing each hem until they settled against me.

"Pam will kill me," she scolded me for balking. "Hurry up and go so you can come back on time."

"Be careful," I said. "The fence is for the weres. The voltage is fatal. Don't go anywhere near it. It's also galvanized with silver in case any vampires are stupid enough to touch it. Both it and the window shutters are set on a timer, which goes off every night at seven. Lock the door behind me."

She rolled her eyes good-naturedly. "Yessir. Anything else?"

I bent low and scooped my wife beater that she'd swiped from my closet. "This comes with me."

She crossed her arms over her bare breasts and pouted. "Why? I like it. And you have a million of them."

Holding her gaze, I brought it to my face and inhaled deeply. "None of them smell like fairy come."

She grabbed a throw pillow and launched it at my head. "Gross! Okay, you're definitely giving it back to me now."

I batted the pillow aside with no trouble and caught her by the wrists. She struggled, laughing and wiggling. I grinned hungrily and shoved her against a wall to still her enticing body.

"It's mine. I'm taking it. Now be a good girl and wait for my return."

She used our position to lift her leg and hike it up on my hip. She batted her dark eyes at me and simpered, "Yes, Eric. Anything you want."

I growled warningly and kissed her hard, grinding her. "Damn you, woman."

She broke my hold on her wrists and pushed me back playfully. "Hurry back."

I made it to the door, only to turn back and stare at her. I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

She grinned at my speechlessness and waved primly. "Have a good day at work, dear."

What could I say to that? I turned away from her before I did something weak and took off towards Shreveport.

I landed at eleven exactly and morphed into the brooding, indifferent Sheriff of Area Five. It didn't take much. Without Sookie, I _was_ brooding and indifferent. I waltzed into my place. The crowd parted as I moved towards my throne. I heard fangs click all over the room. Perhaps it hadn't been wise to immerse myself in vampires when I smelled like an exotic drug, but I didn't care. Showering wouldn't have removed the scent of her blood from my system, and it was my wish to keep her on me for my own comfort. And for my own vanity. Sookie had consented to be mine. Those who knew of her and of what she was could smell my link to her and know if they wanted her, they'd have me to contend with. Those who were ignorant of fairies could simply drool at the irresistible essence radiating off of me and envy me my secret stash of magical blood and sex.

I took a seat, glaring coldly at the crowd. My head inclined one inch to the left and Pam responded instantly, appearing at my side.

"Fool," she spoke to me in Old Norse. A room full of vamps precluded whispered English. "You smell like sex and candy."

I sneered gloatingly. "So what?" I answered in my native tongue. "Let them smell what they can never have."

"Glad you're so cocky," she replied dryly. "What are you orders?"

"The weres in the Bon Temps woods. What is being done about them?"

"Our people are watching," she answered. "Now that Sookie is home, it won't take them long to circle her house."

I nodded. "I want three of them. Alive. Have your fun with them first, if you like, but they're to be in chains tomorrow night. What of the new vamps you mentioned?"

She waited politely while I backhanded a fawning human man that had dared to touch my wrist. His blood hit the air before he hit the floor. His adoring expression merely grew bigger as he exalted me from below. Jesus, I missed Sookie already. Why was the tiniest pixie in Louisiana the only creature who wasn't afraid or in awe of me? She was the blast of salty sea air I missed so badly from the old country in this muggy, suffocating vacuum of Southern adulation.

"They're around," she resumed our discussion. "Would you like three of them in…pre-loved condition as well?"

I considered. "Are the operating together as a pack?"

"As far as I can see."

"Then one should suffice. Bring me the mouthiest of them. Silver him alongside the weres," I paused again. "Make sure he isn't an emissary before you do. I'd rather we didn't piss in anyone's blood, should this prove politically motivated."

She nodded, her severe ponytail slipping down her neck as she did. "Anything else?"

I settled back into my chair, my invisible cloak of deigning tolerance settled with me. "Send my shirts over to Sookie's house. I want her to rub herself in all of them."


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N: ** I had so much fun writing this chap that I've decided to marry it. Love to all, the reviews really push me to finish. Sookie's POV.

I had showered again and changed into a light blue summer dress, one that I'd never worn in front of him before. It had a pretty sweetheart bust and ended just above my knees. It was delicate and innocent and I knew now that those things turned him on to no end. I fixed my hair at my bathroom counter, noting that all of my perfume bottles and scented lotions were missing from the counter top. It was obvious he'd removed them. I didn't need to be told that I wasn't to wear them anymore. They covered my scent. My soaps were fine, but Eric didn't want any chemicals on my skin when he touched me.

I bit back a shiver of erotic pleasure, angry at myself for letting him dictate my hygiene. But I couldn't help it. Honestly, how mad can a woman get when her man loved her for what she was? Eric thought I smelled better than anything Donna Karen could concoct in her fancy perfume laboratory. That was high praise. So I bid my perfume-wearing days farewell and continued fixing my hair until it curled loosely around my shoulders.

It was three fifteen when I heard someone at my door.

He had also showered and changed.

He wore his usual dark jeans and one of his zillion wife beaters. (Maybe the one he took from me, I couldn't tell.) The pimpishly low neckline showed me that all of my red smooch prints had washed away. No matter. Plenty more where they came from. His strange little talisman hung from his neck as usual. His leather jacket completed the ensemble as he stood in my door frame. One of the perks of being a flying vampire. He didn't have to deal with my killer silver fence. I smirked at his obscured figure as I opened my door. He'd decided to be a gentleman and knock, for some reason. I thought that odd, considering he'd nearly blasted that same door off its hinges not six hours ago.

I smiled up at him, holding it wide open.

He smiled back, that soft, knowing smile that I was quickly starting to regard as the Sookie Smile.

"Invite me in," he drawled lazily.

I chortled and crossed my arms. "You already have an invitation."

His smile widened and I knew he was about to say something irritating. "Show me how much you enjoy my entry."

The inappropriate, double entendre gall of him. I blushed straight to my hairline and shoved to one side. "Just get your ass in here," I huffed gracelessly.

He snorted imperiously and strode in like he owned the place. I barely had the door shut before I was whirled around and pulled up to his annoyingly pretty mouth. "I love how you defy me," he whispered, and kissed me like he hadn't seen me in years. To make a point, I struggled against him for a very respectable three seconds before I melted into him and kissed him back shamelessly. We stood that way from some time. His lips were warm. His chest and arms were warm. My fingers plunged into his hair and I pulled his head back, trailing lines of wet, tonguing kisses down his scratchy throat.

His vampiric growl told me that he liked them. A lot.

"We need to talk," he grunted unwillingly.

"Later," I answered distractedly, kissing deep into the V of his necklace.

"No, Sookie. Now."

I made a whining noise of disapproval and ignored him. "I love when you've been flying," I told him. "You smell like rain water afterward."

His arms tightened around me and his growl deepened. His nose buried itself in my hair. I dragged my teeth over the flawless skin of his upper chest and hummed happily.

"_Vacker_," I murmured into him.

Thank God for Google and its English to Swedish dictionary. I even listened to its audio, to make sure I hit my 'a' and rolled my 'r' properly. With that one word, I'd called him beautiful. Glorious. Handsome. Sweet. And clever.

He gripped my upper arms and pushed me back from him, looking at me hard. I was getting used to these drilling stares. They meant I'd done something that astonished the hell out of him. I continued to smile my happy smile.

He dropped his forehead to mine, his eyes slipping closed. "_Min hjärta_," he muttered back.

I giggled and shook my head. "Sorry. I've used up all my Swedish. What's yours mean?"

His eyes slid back opened and drown me in contemplative blue. He sighed. "No matter. We need to talk. You won't distract me with pretty words," he leaned in and took another kiss from me. "I don't care how fucking sexy your accent in Swedish is."

I grinned and pushed away from him. "Fine. Spoilsport." I walked over to my sofa and sat primly, my dress falling over my firmly-shut knees. "What's new?"

He walked over to one of my chairs opposite the sofa and settled deep into its cushions. No cuddling, then. He looked troubled as he spoke. "The fence and shutters are stopgap measures. I've ordered some of the weres and vamps looking for you to be brought to me."

I nodded slowly. "Do you know why they're looking for me? Or for whom they work for?"

"Not at present. But I'm sure they'll be forthcoming when I interrogate them tomorrow night."

I inhaled slowly and sat up a little straighter. "Will you torture them?"

"Yes. If need be."

A very unchristian thrill of excitement gored me. This was Eric protecting me. This was Eric more than happy to kill for me. Bad people wanted to hurt me. I knew he could rip their throats out and roar with victory at their death. A tiny part of me wanted to encourage his attack dog tendencies. But the bigger part of me spoke up.

"I can't help the vampire, but I want to read the weres while you question them. I..." I bit my lip, "...I don't want them killed."

"They'd kill you in a second."

"Exactly. They're animals. I'm not."

"All the more reason to put them down."

I shook my head and crossed the small space between us. I straddled his lap, cupping his throat and eyeing him softly. "Please," I asked him. "Please. Let me help you. Let's do this together."

He didn't respond to my intimate hold on him. He simply stared up at me. His flight had messed up his hair again. A strand of wheat hung boyishly in front of those baby blues. I only meant to push it aside, but my fingers crept deeper, burrowing into the wheat. I felt his resolve weaken considerably through our bond, despite his stony expression. He just couldn't handle it when I played with his hair.

I smiled when I felt his annoyance at my discovery. With my backstage pass into his head, he couldn't hide from me anymore. I fanned my other set of fingers into his hair and scratched his scalp gently. His eyes fluttered. I bent to kiss his forehead. "I promise not to abuse this," I assured him. "If you promise to let me help you tomorrow night."

His head tipped back into my hands and I knew I had him. "Very well. Just don't stop."

I laughed and settled deeper into his lap, massaging his head and introducing a new, sunnier topic of conversation.

E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S

_5:32am_

He'd insisted he check the perimeter. Twice. He insisted I check my awareness to see if weres or no-good humans were lurking in my woods. I came up empty. As dawn approached, he grew more and more restless, moving through my home, checking locks and structural strength. I couldn't get him to sit still. The sun was hunting him.

He wasn't even aware of it. His instincts were so ingrained with avoiding dawn that my request for him to stay awake with me was chafing them badly. They were telling him to find shelter. I was telling him to stay put. Needless to say, he felt conflicted.

I took his hand to still him as he paced by me. Weak, pre-dawn light was creeping into my windows, alighting on his pale, furrowed face. "Trust me," I told him. "I just need to see if this works."

"I do trust you, lover," he kissed my hand. "But we've already established that your blood will not protect me for long. A few minutes, at best. But," he caught me and brought me to him. "I do wish to see the sunrise with you. I had imagined that you would want—," he stopped himself. I smiled reassuringly.

I hadn't explained fully what I was thinking. Maybe because I didn't want to get my hopes up. Maybe because I didn't want to introduce such a dangerous idea into the world. But my visit with the Fae had made it fairly clear; my vampire had been gifted with Light. My Light. There were only so many ways to interpret that. Him at my side, in darkness or light.

I mean, come on.

What else could it be? I had inoculated him. He was immune to sunlight. Not just for a few minutes, but for...well...maybe indefinitely. I got the impression that fairies and vampires don't exactly treat their bonds like a Vegas wedding, easily broken once everybody sobered up. No. For immortals like them, bonding was a big damn deal. So if my fairy Light had sunk into his body, surely that meant he was now protected, if not forever, then for at least my lifetime. It _had_ to be the case.

I snuggled into him, willing my calm into his mind. "You've had more of it now. And with our bond and our consent, who knows? Maybe you'll be able to stay longer. But if not," I stroked his back through his jacket, "then at least we'll see the sunrise together. Then we'll jump back inside and you can sleep in the basement. Deal?"

His hands found my bare shoulders and crossed over them possessively. "Perhaps I should drink from you now. Just to be sure."

I shook my head against him. That would ruin my experiment. "Later. I promise. Right now, let's just try it and see."

He grunted, but relented. "Very well. Shall we?"

I took his hand and opened the door. I pulled him out onto the porch. The sun was getting stronger; the weak, bluish haze was turning orange. I turned and smiled encouragingly. "Can you put us on the roof?" I suggested.

He wasn't looking at me. He was eyeing the eastern horizon with unblinking eyes. Orange was tinting his hair. I wasn't sure how strong the light needed to be to hurt him, but so far, so good. No smoke was rising from him yet.

He nodded and pulled me close. "Yes," he answered quietly.

We were out of the porch, above the ground and on the roof before I completed my next breath. The tiles slanted harshly under my bare feet. He'd sat us squarely on the apex, straddling it with our legs on either side of the house. "Jeez!" I huffed incredulously. "Not so fast next time! I wanna enjoy it."

Eric was still riveted to the east, oblivious. He was behind me, I had to crane my head backward to see his faraway gaze. His arms snaked around my waist and pulled me back firmly into him. The light on the roof was even stronger, free of the shade from the trees. I settled back into him and turned east as well. The smallest sliver of the sun had peaked. Direct light shone into our eyes.

This was it. This was the moment of truth.

I took one of his hands from my waist and held it in front of me. Orange-yellow light blasted his alabaster skin. I squinted and zeroed in on it. I tapped our bond. Hell, I mauled it. Looking for pain. Looking for terrible, boiling heat. He felt me and opened his body to me, letting me read his nerve endings, his pain processors. There was nothing so far. He wiggled his fingers and I knew he was watching them as well.

No smoke. No burns.

We held our breath and sat. The sun reached a quarter full. Then a half. Then three-quarters. I didn't really notice. I only had eyes for his skin.

With his chest and legs pressed into me so tightly, I felt his trembling, faint as it was. I continued to watch his hand for smoke. I wasn't going to let a few minutes of health cloud my judgment. I gripped his other hand at my waist.

"It's been so long," he whispered into my hair. "So very long."

I nodded, determined to monitor him carefully and let him lose himself in the light, if he wanted to. I kept his hand out in front of me, stroking his long fingers with mine. Aside from his newly acquired warmth, there was no change. Black blisters didn't appear. Smoke never materialized. I checked my watch. We'd been outside for twenty-three minutes.

I took a shaky breath. The sun was up. Up and out and shining and anti-vampire and lighting up the whole world. From our view, other houses became visible through the treetops. Birds sang their morning howdeedos. The dew on the grass lit up, only to shrink and disappear.

Forty-four minutes.

We said nothing. What was there to say? My eyes never left his hand. I had a choke hold on our bond. Eric never moved behind me. He stayed as tightly strung as a wire, his eyes never leaving the sun that had forsaken him for over a thousand years.

Finally, he pulled his hand away and tucked it back around my waist.

"No!" I protested, tugging it. "I need to make sure."

He held me tighter. For the first time, he looked away from the east and stared down at me. Over my shoulder, I stared back. So pale, my vampire. Sunlight bounced off him like it did my white house. His eyes were bluer. I let myself look at him, dropping the nurse impulses. My eyes felt locked into his.

I felt something surging up in the bond.

It started deep in the recesses of his mind and was barreling towards me at a terrible speed.

"Your gift to me," he said softly.

I swallowed and nodded. "Looks like."

The bond roared in my ears. The vampire sat quietly behind me. "I am a day walker again."

I nodded again, my eyes felt huge. I couldn't seem to get my eyelids around their huge curve, even in the bright light. "Looks like," I repeated.

He was splitting my head in half. The sheer intensity of him was so unbearable that I gasped. "Eric," I entreated. "What is it? Are you okay?"

He didn't answer. Instead, he buried his head into the crook of my neck and shoulder and let our bond erupt spectacularly. He wasn't okay. He was undone. Dozens of emotions, a thousand times stronger than the human range, broke over me and I moaned. I gripped his head for anchorage as he drown me with disbelief and joy and fear and pride and pure, childlike amazement. Gratitude. Blind possessiveness. Love.

I can't explain love in human terms. Can you imagine how impossible it is to explain it in vampire magnitude? The love Eric felt for me was devastating. I moaned again, unable to withstand it. It filled my nose and mouth and lungs, there was no breathing around it. I pulled oxygen instinctively. It may as well have been water, for all the good it did.

No wonder he didn't enjoy using the word. It was far too little.

Eric was killing me with his love. I held him fast and let him. He didn't speak. Words were beyond useless.

"Baby," I gasped after a while. "You need to let go."

He gave a broken gasp against my neck and nodded, pulling back slowly. I panted as our bond eased its hold on me. I groped for his hands and held them up.

Clean as a whistle.

Fifty-two minutes.

He shifted behind me and I felt his mind fall into a more organized pattern. He was reasserting his rationality. Suddenly my weight felt weird and I realized he was lifting us up, off of the roof. Our feet dangled as we hovered a few feet off the tiles. I reached back and held on by his neck. He had me by the shoulders and waist.

I was hovering above my house in a vampire's arms in the sunshine. A very strange start to the day, I do declare.

"How do you feel?" I asked. "Is the light draining you at all? Is it harder to fly?"

We rose up and down slowly. Systems check. He spoke clinically. "No. It appears to take the same amount of energy and concentration as it does at night."

I nodded. "Okay. What now?"

He gripped me and maneuvered over and down, setting us on my lawn. The minute my feet hit grass, I whipped around and looked him over.

No burns.

Fifty-four minutes.

I pushed his jacket off his arms. "Show me. I wanna see."

He complied and slipped it off. More of his pale skin exposed itself to the sun and my scrutiny. I ran my hands over the dense musculature of his biceps and forearms. "Any pain?"

He shook his head, looking slightly dazed, but still in control. "None."

"What about your eyes?" I couldn't think of enough questions. I tried to remember what Bill had told me about how the sun affected him. "Can you see clearly? Is it too bright?"

"Strangely, no," Eric answered. He scanned the house and the forest beyond. Another systems check. "My sight has adjusted. I can see very well."

"Okay," I shuddered with worry. "Run for me. Fast as you can."

He nodded. He seemed to appreciate that I was trying to test if the sun sapped him in any way. He was gone in a blink. I heard to whoosh of air passing me. He was on the other side of me in an instant.

I jumped and put my hands on him again. Probing. "How far?"

"A mile."

I was too preoccupied to be impressed. "And? Anything? Any difference?"

He shook his head. "Morning glories distracted me. I nearly hit a tree. But no. My ability is unchanged."

"Morning glories?"

He buried his arms under my probing fingers and pulled me into him. Apparently he was done with my medical attentions. I was forced to just hold him, not examine him.

"I haven't seen a morning glory in a thousand years. They close up at night."

My lines of inquiry died. I craned my chin up and regarded him with a new thought entirely. Eric Northman, a living piece of antiquity, hadn't seen a sunlit world in a very long time. Plants behaved differently. So did animals. So did people. There were different smells. Different business hours. Clouds, not stars. Traffic jams. Et cetera et cetera.

This was real. Holy crap, this was actually happening.

I smiled wanly. "Hey," I said to him. "You're really here with me. In the sunshine."

The look he gave me was one I'd never seen before. His face, for the first time, was stripped naked. No arrogance or age gouged at his smooth features. His eyes were wide. His mouth was slightly open. He looked thirty. He looked human. He looked…pure.

"We…" He stopped, unsure of his words. "We need to stay vigilant. This…this may not last."

"We will," I smiled sweetly. "But what if it does? How amazing would that be?"

"Very," he allowed himself to smile back. "Very amazing. Can…can we walk? For a little while?"

He _must_ have been shell-shocked. I can't remember Eric ever _asking_ for anything. Not like that. I nodded and took his hand, pointing my bare feet toward the gate entrance.

"Let's do."

E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S

I avoided the cemetery and led us straight into the woods.

We didn't talk much. I just held his hand and walked alongside him, letting him take in the world. He slung his leather jacket over his other shoulder. I was glad for it. I wanted to continue watching him for any telltale signs of crispiness. But there was none. His bloodless skin rippled over his taut body as he moved, which was very pretty, but it remained impervious to light.

His gaze traveled this way and that. He watched how the sunlight bled through the leaves above us. He listened to the call of North American birds that he'd probably never heard before. He inhaled more than usual, not for air, but for scent. Bugs buzzed and zipped around us. He caught a beetle midair and examined it with fascination as it crawled in the valley of his palm.

Meanwhile, I made my way carefully, watching for stones and twigs. I should have grabbed shoes, but couldn't really muster up the regret for not doing so. Who cared about shoes? A vampire was walking in the daytime! This was bigger than the moon landing. And I was the only person to see it. You think I'd stop to find shoes?

One hour, twenty-two minutes.

We came to the small creek that ran west of my property. We were pretty deep into the forest now. Not a soul lived out this way. I tugged his hand, indicating that we stop. I wandered over to a grassy bank and sat down, dropping my feet into the running chill.

"Eep," I squeaked. "Cold."

Eric sat beside me, staring at the water as it sparkled at us. Lord knows what he was capable of seeing with his superior eyesight. Fish and tadpoles and all sorts, I'd imagine. Stuff that slept in the reeds at night when he was out normally.

I paddled my feet in the water, churning it up, lifting them and watching the drops slide down my ankles.

"It's a nice day," I remarked conversationally. Like the worst weather in the world wouldn't have been just as astounding to him right now.

He looked at me for a long time before pulling me over to him. I understood his silence. I kissed him. Nothing aggressive. I just wanted him to know that I was happy to wait while he processed.

He put his lips to my throat. I tilted back. The idea of feeding him here, now, was so drugging that I moaned softly at his simple kiss.

"You will be hunted," he murmured, derailing my thoughts. "Every vampire in the world would kill entire armies to get to you. You can grant us daylight, Sookie. The ultimate gift."

I shook my head and pet him sweetly. "It's too late," I replied with certainty. "I gave it to you because I Chose you. It's not a Cracker Jack prize. This was a one-time offer and it's yours. I can't and wouldn't give it to someone else now."

His fangs clicked. What an odd sound at seven in the morning.

"You're certain?"

"Damn skippy, I am."

He chuckled and nuzzled deeper under my chin. Heat skewered me between my thighs.

"Let me feed you," I whispered pleadingly.

"I've already taken from you today," he replied. "I will not take more."

"But I want you to," I whined prettily. "Gauge how much I can spare, then I want you to drink from me. Slow as you can."

Eric grunted and put his tongue against my pulse, gauging the strength of my pulse. His arms went around me, weighing me up. "Half a pint," he reasoned. "You can spare that much. It would take about two days to replenish it."

"Take it," I offered, laying his jacket on the grass and turning away from him on my side. "Lay here with me and drink. I want to celebrate." I looked back at him. "Just do it slowly. Like, hours slowly."

He smirked slightly and moved to lay down beside me. His long body spooned into mine. His arm went under my neck and held me by the shoulders while his other hand rested on my hip. He analyzed my throat, choosing his target carefully. At last, he placed a kiss over his choice. No major arteries or veins, just a slow, steady tap.

"You are everything." He bit down. So gently that I was surprised when blood filled his mouth. It hadn't even felt like he broke the skin. I felt his mouth take a long, lazy tug. The flow was little more than a drip. He sucked just enough to keep the wound open. He had done well. At this rate, he'd take half a pint by noon.

I crooned his name, pleasure washing over me every time he sucked. My head fell into the cradle of his arm, my body lost all tension. The sun bathed my face and I just gave in to being consumed.

My watch was near my face on the ground.

One hour, forty minutes.

His hand had starting rubbing slow, deliberate circles on my hip. My dress rode up slowly with each pass. His body was returning my warmth in equal measure. I felt his erection, rock hard and seeking, pressed against my ass. I reached back and cupped his hip, languidly pulling him forward just as I pushed back.

"_Errric_," I drew out sweetly. Another Swedish dictionary pronunciation. Again, I rolled my 'r' and landed hard on my 'c'. It sounded so sultry and exotic. I preferred it to the lazy, American rendition.

He broke suction and hissed warningly, "You risk my control, Sookie. Don't provoke me."

I chuckled and rubbed into his erection harder. "Are you saying you're incapable of making love gently?"

"Very few feelings I have for you are gentle."

I turned my head. My blood trickled down my neck as I did. I looked at him and smiled as my fingers worked nimbly on his belt buckle. "Then focus on the one or two of them that are."

I had his pants open and his heavy shaft spilled into my hand. I moaned and pumped him behind me. God, it felt so good to be with him like this.

His eyes slammed shut and he growled his rough animal growl, thrusting into my fist. "I haven't made love in the daylight for a thousand years, lover."

I giggled and tightened my grip. "I've never done it at all. I'm pretty sure the mechanics are the same."

My dress was climbing up my hip into his fist. Suddenly my rear was bare. I hadn't bothered with panties. Eric's throaty rumbling grew louder at the discovery. He fingered me carefully from behind, sliding them into my folds, listening to my gasps as he touched me so privately.

"Never?"

I shook my head, my eyes closed in ecstasy as I rode his fingertips. "I've never been with a human man. No sex in the sun for me."

He withdrew his fingers and I sobbed as his cock filled their place, sliding slowly, deeply, until I had all of him. Moving his hips at an agonizing tempo, he lowered to my neck once again.

"Then I shall be your first." He resumed feeding. His hips moved slightly faster than his mouth. One pull on my throat, three gentle pushes into my core. One pull, three pushes. Over and over and over. I lost my mind to him. I was moaning nonstop now. His name. God's name. Pretty pleases. Don't you dare stops. Varying combinations of the above.

He broke suction again to lean forward and slash his forearm that had been holding my shoulders. Blood ran freely down his bare arm. "Take my blood, Sookie. Bond with me."

I rolled my hips in time to his as I looked over my shoulder. "The third bond," I whispered to him. "You'll never be rid of me after this, Eric. Are you sure?"

He caught my teasing tone and smiled beautifully. Still mostly clothed, he pulled us even tighter together. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled something out and grabbed my hand. "Drink from me now. Give yourself to me completely."

Smiling, I leaned into his arm and sealed my lips to his wound just as he took a few final sips at my neck. Our connection exploded in our heads, tightening, expanding, boiling over into utter chaos. My body clenched him viciously as I came screaming against his bloody skin. He slammed home in me and howled like a beast, rutting frantically, pumping until he was bone dry.

Delirious, we called each other's names, clutching other as we rode out our climax. To any accidental observer, we were just to young people making love in the woods. Perfectly natural. They certainly wouldn't see the _super_natural occurrence that had just fused us together for eternity.

Somewhere in the deluge, a ruby appeared on my left ring finger, glinting brightly in the light.

To the vampire, the Fae and the human worlds, I was now totally and unconditionally _his_.


	11. Chapter 11

**A/N:** Eric's POV. As usual, your love commands my typin' fingers. They're slaves to your whim.

She fell asleep in my arms.

Our ardent nights, her minor loss of blood, her anxiety about my sun exposure, and her orgasm all contributed. I felt her go lax as I cleaned her neck, making sure I caught every last drop of my precious supply. I was still nestled inside her. A vampire perk. We didn't always soften after climax. I knew from our bond that she liked it when I continued to occupy her, long after the fact. I'm sure she could feel my own pleasure in the act. She would gasp in scandal if I said so, but having my dick sheathed inside her calmed me as nothing else did. Sookie's body was my home. I planned to inhabit it as often and as long as possible.

So she slept still joined to me.

I, however, wouldn't dare. I held her close, admiring how she looked in the light of day, but I did not succumb to the drowsy pull that was urging me to die for the day. We were out in the open. Weres were hunting her. Awake, I could protect her, but more than three would prove difficult. Not only that, if any escaped me, then my brand new secret would be blown. A vampire was out in the woods in the middle of the day with the girl. Yes, it's certain. Yes, she's might be responsible.

And just like that, it would be out.

And despite Sookie's confidence, no vampire in the world would believe that she was incapable of giving them the same gift. They would kidnap her. They would ask nicely and bribe her with anything she liked. Or they'd simply torture her. Starve her. Kill her family and friends in front of her. Demand that she wave her little wand and infuse them with her Light. It didn't matter if she couldn't. She could explain a hundred different ways that what she had given to me was unique and unrepeatable. They'd never believe her. They'd end up killing her in their desperation to make her comply. And I would lose her. I would lose her and she will have already taken my preferred method of suicide. Without her I would wither, and the sun would deny me my true death.

I looked up at it. Its unblinking eye looked back.

The sun.

I looked back down at my side.

My angel.

Vampires simply didn't glimpse such things.

She murmured in her sleep and burrowed backward, closer to me. She tightened her hold on my arms around her. She sighed contentedly, as if we did this all the time. I curled my hips and legs securely around hers. She had absolutely no idea. She just lay there, sweet as honey, not understanding the devastating power she had bestowed upon me. With this gift, she had both freed and yoked me. I was free; the sun had forgiven me because it loved her. I was enslaved; the woman in my arms owned me, body and soul. I was no longer my own. I was Sookie's, for her to do with as she pleased. Perhaps is was the vampire bond that chained me so tightly to her. Perhaps it was the Fae bond. Perhaps whatever mystical combination of the two had broken my will and left me quivering with need for her.

Perhaps there was no magic at all. Just Sookie. She was more than enough.

I shook my head in annoyance. I felt blood pooling in my ears and swelling in my sinuses. The bleeds were coming. I needed to sleep. Her gift had not abolished that requirement, and we simply weren't safe in the woods.

Gently, I disengaged from her and zipped myself up. She frowned in her sleep and turned into me, fisting her little hands in my tank. Her leg hooked disapprovingly over my thighs. The ring I'd placed on her finger winked at me. "No," she muttered petulantly. Unconsciously, she thought I was leaving her. I gathered her up in my coat and held her to my chest. She settled down instantly and nuzzled her head into my shoulder.

My heart clenched. I gritted my teeth and ignored it.

I walked us back to her home. My eyes and nose were relentless, searching for any sign of intruders. But I detected nothing. Her part of the forest was still clear. I got us inside her fence perimeter and turned it on before walking inside. I kicked off my shoes and took us upstairs. The shutters were open. Light flooded every room. I flinched when I passed through the beams, expecting pain. There was nothing. My lover's Light protected me.

I pulled her sheets back and settled her in it before stripping my clothes and her pretty dress and joining her. I left the curtains open. Reckless, certainly, but like Sookie, I needed to see how long this protection would shield me. I would awaken if I began to burn.

Greedily, I tugged her on top of me. Her soft breasts pressed into my chest, her arms and legs all found anchors and she gripped me, matching my appetite for contact. I clutched her to me like a spoiled child would a doll and let my eyes fall shut.

I always slept during the day. Never again would I have to fear it.

E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S

"So what exactly am I to make of this?"

It was after four in the afternoon when I rose again, having had enough rest and no longer needing to stay dormant until dark. After putting on my jeans, I found her downstairs, curled up in a chair with a book, a yogurt cup, and my ring between her fingers. I entered the room gingerly. It would take a while for me to move in the light with the same confidence as the dark. My feline namesake was asleep in her lap. I smirked at him. Now that Sookie was mine, I could afford to be generous and allow him such liberties without feeling jealous. She looked up at me, brows arched playfully. She held the ruby up.

"Well? Mister I-Don't-Believe-in-Marriage-Between-Mortals-and-Vamps? What's this all about?"

The blood stone winked at me again. I'd chosen it carefully from my collection, which I'd accumulated over many centuries. It had belonged to the Ottoman Princess Esma. She'd given it to me as a token of her appreciation for tall, light-haired men when I visited her court in 1798. Out of courtesy for her generosity, I'd skipped eating her and had settled for one of her handmaidens. Her ring had joined my assortment of precious stones. It was the size of a pea, set in white gold and married with four smaller diamonds. I kept no large diamonds, however. I found their colorlessness uninteresting.

Sookie was waiting, still holding the ring aloft.

I shrugged. "You are mine. Your world as well as mine need know this."

She smirked indulgently. "Soooooo, no civil partnership ceremony in Vermont? You're just staking your claim?"

I settled into the sofa and gazed at her coolly. "Correct. Do you wish for me to marry you? I will, if that is your desire."

She blinked rapidly, her hand falling into her lap next to her pet. "You're serious. You'd marry me? In a Christian church with my friends watching and picketers outside damning our union?"

I chuckled at the image. "As I say, if you wish it. A Christian marriage is immaterial to me, lover. It wasn't my religion even when I lived. But I am interested in as many official bodies as possible recognizing our bond. Human legal systems and religions included. I will have no one dispute my claim to you."

Her brow climbed higher. "And vice versa."

"Of course."

She snorted and held her ring up, inspecting it carefully. "It's stunning, Eric. I should have said that first. Thank you."

I nodded. "Anything, lover. So? Would you like me to ask you for your hand?"

She smiled and shook her head. "Actually, no. I think we have enough on our plates right now. Why don't we just stick to the staking-your-claim reason. I'm perfectly happy to wear it and inform human men that I'm taken."

I eyed her pointedly. "And two-natureds."

Sam and Alcide slipped through her eyes yet again. Her smile dropped and she nodded earnestly. "Everyone."

"Excellent."

She set her book and yogurt on the coffee table and shooed the cat away, unfolding from her seat and sliding towards me. "So." She crawled into my lap, every bit as feline as her pet, and settled her arms around my neck.

"So," I echoed.

"We're bonded now. Your way. My way. The good old-fashioned way." She wiggled her ring finger. "What do we do now?"

I slid my hands up her thighs, under her dress. It really was distressing how distracting she was. I needed to worry about getting fucked on all fronts from my adversaries, and yet all I could think about was how many pieces I needed to rip that dress into. One massive tear right up the front like our first night? That was certainly the most expedient. Or did I want to take my time and rip tiny little ribbons off, one by one, until she was standing naked in a pile of fabric strips? She would reward me with more shocked rebukes if I did it that way.

I cupped her ass and hissed angrily at what I found. "Where are you panties?"

She arched in my palms, widening her splay across me. "You said not to wear anything I value in front of you. I can't risk my underwear. You'll shred every pair."

I dipped my fingers deeper between her thighs, skirting where she wanted me, punishing her with soft little strokes in the wrong places. "So you wear nothing? This is supposed to pacify me?"

She whimpered and squirmed on top of me. Still, I denied her. My fingers played the innermost silk of her leg, nothing more. She writhed with frustration.

"So immodest," I goaded her. "Will you always seek relief so whorishly with me, lover?"

" 'm not a whore," she muttered childishly, rotating her hips like a trained seductress.

I chuckled. "For me, you will be. You'll fuck me shamelessly every time. Isn't that right?"

Her lips twisted in distaste and she jerked impatiently, hating my insight.

"No," she denied. She would not concede to me. I laughed as she did nothing to stop her own body from molesting mine. So full of her own virtue, she saw no conflict with her wanton behavior.

I removed my hands from under her dress and she cried out in annoyance. Smiling wide, I cupped her cheeks. "Delightful creature."

"Shut up," she sniffed at me and rose from my lap in a huff. I rose as well. Playtime was over. "We need to get to Fangtasia. Dark will come soon."

Standing beside me, Sookie became serious. "Are you still feeling all right? I didn't want to wake you. I saw blood leaking from your ears."

I nodded. "I'm fine." I held my hand out towards the window as proof. My photosensitivity seemed all but gone.

She sighed in relief and I tugged her into my bare chest, lowering my face to hers. "And you? Have I left you enough blood?"

She came to me effortlessly, tipping her forehead against mine in trusting affection. "Plenty. Plus I have some of yours. I'm healthy as a horse."

"Very well. We must hurry." I did a quick calculation. Sookie's car was still at work and mine were all in Shreveport. I couldn't call my driver, too much time and too unscrupulous. I took her hand. "Fly with me."

She barked an incredulous laugh and cocked her head at me. "You're not serious."

"Completely. It's the quickest way. We risk the least exposure as well."

"No way!" she cried. "It's daytime! Everyone will see! And I'll freeze to death up there. And you don't come with a seatbelt. Hell, no."

We didn't have time to argue and I could sense this was a disagreement she would eventually yield, if given the opportunity to object extensively. That was her way. Assured in that knowledge, I made a decision and snatched her up. I flew us out her door and into the air above her property before she could even gasp in outrage.

"Eric!" she screamed, clutching me as I hovered a hundred feet in the air.

"What's wrong, lover?" I purred as I held her waist. "Afraid people will see up your dress?"

She wanted to slap me. I could see it in her eyes. If she could have spared a free hand, she would have done it in a heartbeat.

"Put us down," she hissed furiously. "You're not even half dressed. You can't just carry me off."

"You think I give a fuck about flying naked into Shreveport?" I egged her anger.

"Please," she asked firmly, pushing into me nervously and looking at the ground. "I wasn't ready. I don't feel safe."

I gentled instantly and trapped her chin in my fingers. "Let us practice then. I'll take you back in a second. Tell me which you prefer."

I leaned down and swept her up bridal style, her legs dangling securely over my arms, her body cinched into my chest. "This?" I took off, speeding a quick lap around the immediate area. She gulped and clutched my neck like a child, but did not protest. I halted and softened my hold, urging her legs down until she hooked them around my waist. I coaxed her arms around my neck and her cheek against my own, her body locked intimately around me.

"Or this."

I took off again, the trees and landscape a mere blur beneath us. I completed my lap and touched her lawn as gently as a downed kite. She held me tightly, but was notably calm and that pleased me.

"Which makes you feel safer?"

With a deep breath, she shifted into me, cinching her body more tightly around mine. "This one. This one's good."

It was also my preference. Every inch of her was plastered to me. I nosed into her hair and inhaled deeply, taking too long and letting her know I was happy with her assent. And her position. Up in the air, all I had to do was open my fly and I could experience her in a way I'd never considered before. The chill of the biting wind would be a wonderful contrast to her volcanic internal heat. It was something to consider. Soon, once I'd accustomed her to flight with me. Watching her come in the midst of a storm, or a sunset, would be a sight worth staging.

"Come," I urged her. "Let's get our things and go."

E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S

We landed at Fangtasia as the sun began to dip low on the horizon. She'd worn her coat, and holding on tightly to me, she'd managed to stay warm during the trip. I'd had to focus harder than usual. Everything looked so different in the light, especially late afternoon. The colors were so intense that more than once, I'd turned into Sookie's face and closed my eyes, operating on autopilot. It was simply too much to comprehend right now. It was easier to concentrate on my human than to appreciate the immensity of what she'd granted me.

Once in my office, I dove into the paperwork Pam had left me and filed the appropriate documents to acknowledge Sookie Stackhouse as my Bonded human companion to the Authority. In the strictest terms, I was remiss not the file before I'd consummated my bond to her, in case there was any objection to my choice. But in reality, it wasn't compulsory and the deed was already done. They could do nothing to circumvent it, their objections to my claiming a Fae be damned. All that was left was formality. As proof to myself, I tapped our bond softly as she sat reading a magazine on my sofa. She was pleasantly bored, waiting for me to finish and for Pam to appear and update us on our guests when they arrived.

The club was opening. I could hear people and feel the presence of other vamps in the building. My bar was coming to life. At least Pam would have no cause to bitch about my absence. Hell, I got there before Ginger.

Sookie looked up, feeling my probe.

Smiling, she probed back, holding my gaze as her nimble little mind explored my emotional state. Annoyingly, she picked up instantly on my anxiety. I tried to minimize it and focus on my dauntless interest in her, but she wasn't fooled.

"Tense?" she asked unnecessarily.

"No," I evaded, easing back into my chair and turning it towards her. "Just thinking."

"Worried thinking," she specified shrewdly, tossing her magazine aside. "Anything I can do to help you?"

Her offer was genuine. I scoffed and raised my brow. "Always, lover."

"Pft," she waved her hand at me. "Perv."

"You offered."

"You refused. At the house. Remember?"

"Merely withholding candy from my baby. Entirely different."

"Well, now who's feeling blue-balled? Not so nice, is it?"

"Language," I tsked her. "What happened to my blushing belle?"

She got up and stalked towards me, her sweet little dress belying its naughty little owner. It kissed along her golden legs and accentuated her enticing tits. Fuck, she was magnificent.

Instead of crawling into my lap as I anticipated, she fell gracefully to her knees in front of me. Still staring me down, she undid my belt and unzipped me. "Your blushing belle wants to help you relax," she said.

I was hard instantly. Around her, I almost always was.

She pulled at my jeans until they pooled at my feet. My cock pointed directly at her from just under my tank.

"Sookie," I growled reprimandingly.

She smiled innocently, batting her huge dark eyes. "You insinuated. Are you now saying you don't want me to..." She bit her lips and looked at the evidence of my wishes. "...help?"

"I was teasing you, lover. Pam will be here shortly. I need to concentrate."

She leaned forward and swallowed my tip in her scalding, heavenly wet mouth. I gasped and bucked hard against her lips. She laved her tongue against the slit, swirling and kissing until I barked her name ferociously.

She let me go, dropping her coyness and letting her eagerness shine through. "Let me," she whispered, mouthing me quickly again. "It'll clear our heads."

"You sucking me off isn't clarifying."

She was out of excuses. She took a little more of me and I felt my resolve buckle. "Please?" she whispered desperately. "I need you. You taste so good."

"Fuck, Sookie."

She felt it. Goddammit, she felt my surrender. The moment it happened she moaned in her pretty voice. Looking at me shyly, she swallowed me tentatively, letting her tongue and lips and inner cheeks coat with me with their mind-blowing heat. She moved experimentally, up and down along my length, testing me. Despite her having tasted me like this before, I'd never been watching her. She felt demur under such an intense audience.

I let my fangs drop. I bared them hungrily at her. "Blow me like you mean it."

Sparks flared up in her eyes and she lost herself to my pleasure. She swallowed as much of me as she could, pumping my base with both hands.

"Yesss," I hissed encouragingly. "Harder. God damn you, girl. Why do I give in to you?"

She hummed hard, loving that she was getting to me. Loving that she made me weak. I gripped the armrests and thrust my hips upward.

"Mmph!" she grunted around me, startled as I actively fucked her while she worked me.

"Don't stop," I growled warningly. "You've started this, now you suck me until I lose my fucking mind in your mouth."

She slid her hands up my thighs, up my stomach, fanning them under my shirt before sliding them back down and playing with my balls. I gave her an open-mouthed hiss, baring my teeth menacingly. Through our bond, she sang with triumph. My aggression was driving her crazy.

The room was growing heavy with her. Only moments before, her scent had been a light, pleasant top note. Like oranges. Now she was unrequited lust personified. She was so hungry for me, her scent was filling my fucking bar with the outrageous evidence of an unsatisfied angel. And it was coming from my office. Every supe in my place would smell her and assume I was incapable of fucking her into jelly.

"Harder," I ordered in a low tone. _So soft so hot and un-fucking-believably good_.

She obeyed me. With her eyes closed, she sucked me so hard her cheeks hallowed out. Her warm hands gripped and milked me so expertly that I almost didn't notice when they started to glow.

She was powering up again.

"Yes," I urged upon seeing it. "More. More, lover. Suck me blind."

Her Light intensified. She was still unaware as she moaned at my praise and swallowed me over and over. My cock tingled achingly, I could see a million waving lines of static electricity jetting from her skin into mine. I'd never seen or felt anything remotely like it and I snarled harshly, loving my Sookie's unique abilities. With the gentlest care, her fingers stroked my balls, sending shocks straight to my spine and making me flail under her mouth.

"Fuck!" I screamed.

With one last squeeze, her hands exploded around my dick and I came roaring on her luscious little tongue. Light, her Light, shot through my dead nervous system, reactivating it for a moment. I felt my heart thump once in response, expanding and restricting, then falling silent. My cock erupted like never before, her power driving it to unprecedented climax. I pumped blindly, swearing, trembling, unable to do anything except come for her in an endless stream.

She never let go. She held me and took everything I gave her.

"Sookie," I whispered, awed.

She moaned for me again, answering my astonishment, and sweetly sucked until I had nothing left.

She looked up hopefully, cradling me between her fingers, unwilling to release me. "Was...was that okay?"

Without thinking, I struck her. Through our bond. I lashed out with all of my enraged disbelief at her genuinely humble question as to whether she'd delivered a satisfactory blowjob instead of the most soul-shattering of my existence. She gasped in shock, dropping me and clutching her head in distress.

She was on her back on my desk in an instant, her dress not fit for rags.

"Jesus Christ!" she sobbed as I rose dangerously above her. My shirt was off. My hands gripping her thighs wide open. My hips in position at her pussy, the apex responsible for informing my clientele she was unsated and oh-so receptive.

"Now, little Fae," I gritted at her threateningly. "It's_ my_ turn."


	12. Chapter 12

**A/N:** Sookie's POV. Lemons with plot sprinkled in for color. You guys continue to rock.

It was happening again.

As I gripped my head in astonishment, Eric attacked me through our bond and overloaded me with his unchecked adoration, just like he had that morning on the roof. There was no control in him. No restraint. He was furious at me, but only because as usual, he thought I was underselling myself. I didn't value my talents, Fae or fornication, as greatly as he did. My insecurity while pleasuring him made no sense to him at all. So he crashed into my mind with everything he had. His love. His need. His bewilderment. His ecstasy.

He made it clear. No one pleased him as I did. Never had and never would. In a word, I staggered him.

I sobbed under his assault, cradling my head in my hands. Never would I have guessed that Eric Northman was capable of emoting so wildly. He was always so still. So flinty and unsentimental.

I fell away from his lap, unable to support myself, even on my knees.

But it didn't matter. I was naked and on his desk through no movement of my own. He loomed above me, already in position to act on his thoughts.

My spine propelled me towards him, arching against the cool wood beneath me, offering my body to him without consulting me first.

"Now, little Fae," he spoke _sotto voce_. "It's _my_ turn."

That was my only warning.

He gripped my thighs and drove deep, forcing my tight body into accepting all of him at once. He was huge. Bigger than I'd ever felt before.

"_ERIC!_" I screamed. I threw my arms behind me and gripped the ledge, bracing myself as he pumped mercilessly. God in heaven, I'd never felt anything so violent and good at the same time.

My core clenched him with choking fervor and he roared so loudly the furniture shook. "Again!" he bellowed at me from his dizzying height, fucking me savagely, pushing every last nerve inside me into spread-eagle tautness and frisking them lusciously. "Let them hear! Tell them who owns you! Tell them no one else satisfies you!"

I sobbed his name again. He had been right before. I was beyond shame when I was with him. I didn't give a damn who heard us or if he wanted me to scream for him. I was an animal. Rutting. And I loved it. I screamed again and begged loudly. "Don't stop," I pleaded, looking at him desperately. "It's so good so fucking good..._please!_...you're so beautiful, baby...so big..._fuck me_!"

He yanked me, slamming my ass into his groin, and howled.

I had no idea that my lustful scent had precipitated his frenzy. Just like I didn't know that even now it was changing, kaleidoscoping into smug, carnal satiation as my pussy was impaled. If I'd asked him, Eric would have described it as startling specific. I was now emitting the scent of a hard-to-please goddess who'd found paradise on his splittingly-enormous cock. He would have explained that, while only moments before, the supes in this bar were being driven crazy with hope when they scented my lust, they were now muttering with envy and disappointment as my scent informed them that only one man was capable of fucking me happy, and he was currently proving it.

"Yes!" I cried again. "Please, Eric. You feel so good, I can't stand it."

Our bond shifted instantly. I heard him breathe deeply.

He slowed his frantic pace.

"Sookie."

I shook my clouded eyes and looked up at him hazily. "Yes, baby."

His expression was fathomless as he sank himself completely, and then stilled. I squeaked with loss, desperate for his rhythm. "What's wrong?"

His eyes were round again. His anger gone. He looked lost. "I..."

I rolled my hips, urging him to move again. "What? Did you want to stop?"

Greed surged in him and he tugged my hips, locking into me tight. That was a big, fat no.

I smiled encouragingly and rose up on my elbows. "Tell me."

He leaned forward, bringing his face closer to mine. He began to move again in slower, fuller strokes. I sighed contentedly. Any way he wanted it, that was how I liked it. I rose up a tiny fraction more and rubbed my lips into his fanged mouth.

"Eric." I whispered it. It wasn't meant for the bar crowd. It was just for him. I loved him. I pushed it hard into his head as I kissed him over our undulating bodies.

He took my hand and placed it over his warm, albeit unbeating, heart.

"More," he asked softly.

"More what?" God, his lips were distracting. What he was saying?

He pressed my hand harder into his pale skin. "Your Light, lover. Give me more."

I leaned back from him, arching over and over into his lazy thrusts. "Why?"

He smiled and rubbed his fingers over mine. "Because it is yours."

I grinned at him. I couldn't help it. His plain words got to me more than fancy poetry ever could. "I don't know how. I might blast you."

"Try," he entreated. "Think of me and try."

I'd never shot him on purpose before. It had always just happened. Heat of the moment kind of thing. I splayed my hand wide and concentrated on him. "Okay," I whispered. I closed my eyes and dove into him. He continued to move, holding me close and plunging deep. His hand stayed over mine. My head tipped back and I exhaled softly. Our bond was monolithic now. Whether it was because it was now permanent, or because we were making love, I didn't know, but it pulsed inside me as surely as his physical body did. I thought of how much I loved him. How he meant more to me than any single creature on this earth. How I prayed to God to let me keep him forever without being turned. I didn't ever want to leave him. I was stronger, calmer, a more complete version of myself with him than I ever was alone.

The need to speak choked me. I needed a word. A word that wasn't overused to the point of sterility. I had only one word that I'd never used before, one that embodied how much he meant to me, one that fit him, no matter what our official status was.

I pressed his heart and leaned my forehead into his throat.

"My husband," I whispered.

Light detonated under our hands. We went rigid, electricity exploding between us and riding our blood into every last nerve ending. Screaming, climaxing, electrocuting each other, we were powerless to do anything but endure as the most exquisite pleasure imaginable stretched us to the limit and burst through our confining skins. I gasped for air. Eric groaned and rumbled above me, a mixture of human and vampire sounds escaping his chest. I felt him erupt inside me, his hot semen spilling deep. I clutched him harder, so afraid that tears pricked my eyes. _What had happened? What had I done?_

I moaned against him, shaking my head as the last of the waves shivered their way out of us. "I'm sorry. I didn't...I don't..."

He collapsed forward, his strength obliterated. Crushed but uncaring, I wrapped my arms and legs around him and held him tight. "I'm sorry," I stroked his back apologetically. "Say something."

He snaked his arms under my back until he was supporting me with them while cradling my head in his hands. His face was buried in my throat. Slowly, he began to lap, his smooth tongue darting in and out, tasting me. I murmured softly.

At length, he lifted his head and looked down at me. Once again, I'd scraped his expression raw. I kept petting him anxiously, coaxing him to speak. His fingers burrowed deep into my hair and he cocked his head, regarding me. He lowered his nose against my cheek and inhaled me until his lungs could hold no more.

"I owe you a dollar," he said at last. "You've overcome everything that I am. You've broken me, lover."

Staring up into his formidable gaze, I couldn't help the snort of disbelief that escaped me. That was the last thing I was expecting him to say. "Don't be ridiculous. I didn't break you. I shot you again. Are you okay?"

He didn't answer. One of the many things I was learning. When Eric felt overwhelmed or uncertain, he chose silence.

The door burst open and Pam swooped in like a hawk.

Eric stood up instantly, our bodies still joined, and hissed territorially while I jerked into a sitting position.

"Jeez, Pam!" I shrieked in embarrassment, hiding my nudity against his chest. I peeked at her from just under his chin. Oh, my God. I was wrapped around him like a slutty fang-banging whore, my legs spread wide and locked around his ass as he stood deep between them. There was no hiding what we were doing.

The vampire screeched to a halt in the door frame. Her nose flared. Her pupils dilated. Her fangs fell. "What happened?" she demanded.

Eric had cupped my head in one hand and splayed the other wide across my back. A shielding gesture. "I'm dick-deep in my tinkerbell, Pam. What does it look like?"

"Hey!" I took umbrage. He shushed me and glared at his progeny.

"Get out," he snarled at her. "This isn't for your eyes."

She inhaled sharply again. I couldn't really blame her. Even to my human nose, I could pick up sex and electrical remnants. To a vampire's nose, it probably smelled like lightening had struck one of those 70s key parties. In reality, I'd electrocuted her maker. Of course she was wary.

She eyed him suspiciously. "You're all right?" she asked him, hesitating to obey. And something else. She kept sampling the air. Something in it was disconcerting her.

"Of course," he snapped angrily. "Do I _look_ damaged?" He was brushing my hair over my shoulder, sweeping it carefully through his long fingers, but not looking at me.

It was weird being naked and ignored at the same time. I spoke up, needing to assuage her distrust. "I wouldn't hurt him, Pam. Honest. I just..."

Eric put a finger to my lips, stopping me. "I said leave, dear one. My bonded and I are not to be disturbed."

Pam's head went up at the term. I tensed, worried that she'd been unaware of his intention to claim me. But she said nothing, nor did she appear particularly angry. Instead, she merely bowed her head in compliance. "Your guests are here, when you're ready." She turned to leave, but glanced my way. "Welcome. Sister."

And she was gone. I expelled a shaky breath, still red as punch with embarrassment and pleased as hell that Pam had given me her equivalent of a gushing adoption.

Eric continued to play with the ends of my hair. He turned back into me and nudged his chin along my forehead. "Forgive her. That won't happen again."

I pushed back, settling my hands back on his desk, looking him over from head to our joined hips. "And you told her the truth? You're all right?"

He smiled and put my hand over his heart again. "Many things happen when I make love to you, but injury isn't among them."

I turned my hand away from him and held it up for us to inspect. My fingers and palm looked so ordinary that I shook my head in befuddlement. "I don't know what you do to me, Eric, but it scares the crap outta me."

He chuckled and brought my hand to his lips, kissing and mouthing the backs of my fingers. "I enchant you, lover. That's why you keep giving me the best fuck of my life."

I blushed and his smile turned wicked. "Didn't Compton tell you as much?"

I turned even redder. I didn't like to hear that name, especially when Eric and I were still coupled. I shrugged and looked away. "He did. But he had reasons to flatter me. You don't."

He must have felt my discomfort. His grin dropped and he pulled me up from the desk into a mated hug with him. "Forgive me," he murmured. "That was ugly of me. And you're right. I have no reason to lie to you, Sookie. You're the most extraordinary lover I've ever known. You destroy me without even trying."

In the same position as when we flew, sans our clothes, I held onto him with the same ferocity. "I just want _you_, Eric. I don't want to think of Bill ever again."

His arms tightened around my back. I sensed his anger at Bill and himself for mentioning him, but he said nothing. At length, he urged me to my feet, slipping free from me in the process.

"We must go."

I nodded, reaching for my dress on the floor. Once again, it fell to pieces in my hands. "Dammit all," I muttered and held it up to him accusingly. "Now what? Shall I read their minds naked?"

He was already in his pants when he looked up and chuckled. "Never, lover. That sight belongs to me."

He walked over to a large stack of shallow boxes in the corner and selected two, one twice as large as the other. "Here," he handed them to me.

One box was La Perla. The other was Dolce & Gabbana. I opened them and found $200 worth of pretty underwear and a nude-pink, short dress made from clouds. Or so it felt like. I slipped on the black lace, then the nude clouds with their halter-top bust, and turned to him. The couture, ragged edges kissed my knees while the bodice held me as lovingly as Eric did. I held still under his gaze. I felt womanly and delicate as his eyes moved over his choice.

"Do you like it?" I asked quietly. I didn't really need to. I could feel his masculine approval fondling me, even at a distance.

He sighed regretfully. "It begs me to bite you. It's a shame that it too will be ripped apart."

I gasped softly. My beautiful new dress already had a death sentence. "You wouldn't," I said, holding my hands over the front. "It's so pretty."

"It's too late," he rasped darkly. "I can already feel it under my hands when I tear it to pieces. I will not spare it."

Throbbing, slithering heat moved through me and once again, I was pathetically eager for him. I mewled at the images he'd dumped in my head. His head shot to one side and he growled. "Stop."

"Stop what?" I asked, clenching my thighs together, willing the ache to lessen.

"Stop thinking about sex. You smell aroused. Your scent will attract attention."

"It's _your_ fault," I accused snippily. "_You're_ the one talking about ripping my clothes off."

"_Stop_!" His eyes burned butane blue, his fangs dropping once again.

I slammed my eyes shut. He looked so dangerous and sexy, I couldn't bear another second. "Then don't look at me!" I shouted back. "Don't look at me. Don't talk to me in your stupid, sexy voice. Don't fill our bond with how you feel. Just don't! You're driving me crazy!"

I was surrounded in an instant, solid arms and a warm wall of muscle pulled me into a rough embrace. "Ridiculously sexy girl," he hissed above me. I kept my eyes squeezed shut. This wasn't helping. His soft shirt buffered his hard body against me. His enormous frame swallowed me up and made me safe and desired. His angry passion pulsed through our bond, despite my plea. He couldn't help it. Apparently I drove him just as nuts.

"How am I to protect you when you smell so fucking good?" he demanded, fisting my hair and yanking my head back so that he could neck me. "How am I supposed to even rest, now that I have the daytime to fuck you as well as the night?"

"Stop," I threw his entreaty back at him. "You're making it worse." And he was. My body was starving for him. Forgotten was our earlier tryst. Even as his come trickled down my inner thigh, my pussy was already quivering in anticipation for more. I put my hands on him, trying to push him away, but ended up groping his arms in naked appreciation.

"I can't have it," he grunted against me. His hand slid under my dress and slipped into my brand new panties. I gasped and moaned as he found my clit and began to work it mercilessly with two fingers. "Come. Immediately," he ordered. "I refuse to let them near you when you're horny. They'll think of nothing but fucking you."

He wasn't gentle. I guess we didn't have time to tease my orgasm out of me. He wanted it quick and dirty, a strategic finger fuck designed to cool me down. I felt his irritation. And his excitement at my unquenchable lust for him. His fingers moved with vampiric speed. And I begged for it.

"_Yes_," I hissed greedily, hitching my leg over his other arm, spreading myself on his fingers. I clutched his neck, straining into him. "Please, Eric-,"

"Shut up," he growled. "Don't talk. Don't tempt me. Just come."

Even his anger turned me on. The lack of sweetness, the intense friction, the impatience for me to do as I was told. Holding him tightly, I went rigid in his arms, his talents getting me off in record time. I came hard, gritting my teeth, trying not to scream. I knew that would only torment him further. I shivered and jerked against him, riding out the last of my orgasm. It must have pleased him. His chest expanded against mine as he inhaled deeply.

Whatever he smelled, it met his approval.

"Good girl," he crooned into my hair, slowing his fingers until they were tapping my clit, making me gasp with each residual bolt of pleasure. He removed his hand and resettled my underwear and dress. He took me by the shoulders and shook me gently. "Don't. Think. About. Sex." He landed hard on each word.

Still shaking, I nodded.

His hand on my lower back, he escorted me out of his office.

We had work to do.

E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S

Pam met us discreetly outside of his door.

"The weres are downstairs, as you requested," she informed him quietly. She ignored me, but she did that head-cocking thing that told me she was still scenting whatever had been puzzling her before. She didn't mention it.

"And the vampire?" Eric prodded.

She nodded. "At your booth. I didn't need silver. He wished to speak with you." She paused and looked at him meaningfully. "He's with the Authority."

I felt Eric go tense at my side.

"His name?" he asked stonily.

"Domingo. Paulo Domingo."

"How old?"

"Old. Four to five hundred years."

"His interest in me?"

"He wasn't shy. He's here about the clusterfuck with the monarchs and why the whole thing involved a human woman." She dropped her lordly gaze at me briefly.

Eric considered. "He seems unaware of her status?"

Pam shrugged subtly. "Unknown. He wants to talk to the sheriff who also appeared to be unnecessarily involved in all this."

Eric grunted in understanding. "What's he drinking?"

Pam snorted. "Tru Blood. Fucking boyscout."

I felt Eric's relief, despite his look of indifference. His possessive grip on our bond lessened slightly. I guess he felt this Authority guy would expect him to share me, as courtesy to a guest. I thought of Eric's rage to stifle my scent around these people. The thought of other vamps drinking my blood helped considerably.

"Pam?" I ventured.

She looked down at me. "Sookie."

"Could you turn up the AC? Like, a lot?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Flushed, are we?"

I looked up at Eric. "It'll help. With...your request?"

His brow arched and he turned to Pam. "Do it. Freeze this place."

Pam looked skeptical but nodded. "Very well. He's waiting for you."

She turned away and Eric started urging me towards the back of the bar. "Are you sure you want me with you?" I asked. "I can't read him."

Still guiding me, he nodded. "He already knows of you. The sooner he meets you, the less mystery will be built around you. As far as he knows, you're the cousin of a pet to the Queen and the ex-lover of one of her subjects. You came to me when he was kidnapped and I discovered him in collusion with the Edgington. My involvement as well as yours can end there."

"Except you entombed Edgington," I reminded him.

"With their blessing. Hush now. Don't speak unless spoken to."

I immediately slipped into the role of a meek human pet and stood discreetly by his side as he greeted the stately-looking vampire in his VIP booth. With a dark complexion and smooth, Spanish hair, he smiled benignly at the Nordic Sheriff of Area Five. "Mr. Northman, I presume."

Eric bowed his head politely. "Señor Domingo. Welcome to my establishment."

I was still as an oak. Given the stakes, I was prepared to play the inferior, just this once. I kept my eyes on the floor.

Domingo gestured, "Please sit with me. We have much to discuss."

Eric smiled. Inwardly, I winced. I knew that smile. It meant absolutely nothing. I prayed it was because I knew him so well now that I noticed it never reached his eyes. "Thank you." He sat and signaled me to do the same. I perched obediently at his side, hoping like hell I looked submissive and beneath my company. I felt a chill in the air. Thank God for Pam. I held back a shiver.

Domingo gestured to me. "Is this the little lady whom I've heard so much about?"

Eric snorted condescendingly. "Perhaps. Are you referring to our recent little spat between royals?"

"Precisely," the dark vampire deigned. "The Authority are quite distressed. The power play was bad enough. Topped with a human execution on live tv and the murder of the Magister - a murder I'm told you witnessed - we've graduated from a spat to a cause célèbre ass fuck."

"Indeed," Eric mused. "However we can help clear this up, my people are at your disposal."

Domingo smiled with a reptilian pull of his lips. Even with my eyes downturned, I caught the flare of his nostrils.

"Excellent. You can start by relinquishing the girl."


	13. Chapter 13

**A/N:** I've been snowballed under all your guys' awesome reviews. I grind them up and mainline them, they're that good. Eric's POV.

"Beg pardon?"

Sookie's voice startled the both of us. I looked over and found my timid human pet had vanished and regular Sookie Stackhouse and joined the conversation. She glared at Domingo like a disapproving school marm would a sassing child. My sense of caution was momentarily eclipsed by amusement.

Domingo blinked. "You are to come with me, Miss Stackhouse. I'm afraid it's non-negotiable."

"Like hell it isn't," she replied tartly. "I'm not going anywhere, least of all with you."

"Sheriff," he spoke to me directly. "You will make her comply."

Sookie snorted in disbelief. "Don't talk to him like he's my pimp. What the hell does the Authority even want with me?"

I smiled slightly and returned Domingo's stare. "She asks a fair question. Why do you need her?"

"This concerns the recent events in Mississippi. We have questions."

"And _we_ have time," Sookie retorted. "Ask away."

"This is not the appropriate venue. And there are those above me who wish to do the asking," he said in a reprimanding tone.

Sookie sat back and crossed her arms. This was the woman I loved. Brave to the point of shocking recklessness. "Well, they're welcome to swing by anytime. Meanwhile, I'm staying with Sheriff Northman."

"I'm afraid that's true," I offered him with insincere apology. "Sookie is my bonded companion. She may not leave my side without my permission, and I'm disinclined to give it. I've heard no reasons to warrant her removal."

"When it comes to the Authority, your permission is moot," Domingo was getting fractionally angrier. "I'm not a local royal interested in annexing your blood supply. Serious allegations have surfaced regarding this woman. Certain...abilities...have been witnessed. She must yield to our investigation."

"Horse puck, I must," Sookie planted her elbows on the table, looking furious and scandalized and wondrously willful. "I'm a human. I don't recognize your authority over me. If I've broken any laws, call the Shreveport police and have them arrest me. Then tell them whatever bullshit allegations you have. But lay a finger on me, I'll call them myself and have you taken in for assault."

Glorious creature, my Fae. I chuckled and took her hand consolingly. "There there, beloved," I pretended to mollify her, not giving a damn if it worked or not. "No one's going to take you against your will." I looked pointedly at the official. "Are they?"

Domingo glared at us. "These alleged abilities of yours would negate your human status, child," he pointed out.

She huffed primly. "I don't know what you're talking about. But even if I have whatever abilities you think I've got, I'm still not vampire. I still claim diplomatic immunity."

Domingo's eyes widened. Deep in their inky depths, I believed I detected a spark of mirth. "Diplomatic immunity?"

"Yes," she pushed through her insecurity at using such a loaded term. "And no foolin'. You try anything, and not only am I calling the cops, I'm calling the AVL and the local news stations. You can drag me kicking and screaming to your creepy vampire lair on live television. I'll make it my business to give you a shit storm, sir. Don't think I won't."

I met this Sookie once, not so long ago. Bratty and shrill and so full of naive righteousness, she could astonish a whole room with her balls. It amused me then, it enchanted me now. I gave Domingo a raised brow of regret. What could I say? My disrespectful human had a point. Technically, they had no legal claims to her. My bond could be bypassed, but my stubborn human was squarely rooted to the floor. The only option they had left was abduction. And while I knew that was the next inevitable step, she had ingeniously bought us some time. There was no way for him to take her in this human/vampire setting.

I rose from my bench and ushered Sookie up to stand beside me. "I trust if you have any further inquiries, you know you're welcome any time," I offered magnanimously.

Domingo rose as well, staring coldly. "We have more to discuss. Your own involvement is under scrutiny."

"And I'm happy to comply," I said coolly. "However you've caught us at an inopportune time. Would you care to return tomorrow evening?"

He stared a moment longer before dropping his gaze to meet Sookie's. She stood her ground and stared back. One thing about Sookie, she found our rudeness far more appalling than our violence. This official hadn't met her high standards of etiquette and she was blasting him with her scathing, Southern disapproval.

"You will both make yourselves available tomorrow night," Domingo announced. With that, he turned and strode towards the door.

Sookie let out a gusty exhalation and relaxed beside me. "Jerk," she mumbled.

I pulled her into me and dipped my head to hers. "What did I say about speaking only when spoken to?" I asked kindly.

She pulled a strange combination of a scowl and a smirk and snitted, "You said so, but I distinctly felt your consent to let me improvise if things got hairy."

I gripped her chin, grinning. "I most certainly did not."

"Did too."

"You _dare_ to question me?"

"You dare to _doubt_ that I'd question you?"

"Insolent girl."

"Patronizing SOB."

I crushed my lips into hers, cupping her face, smothering her with my delight and exasperation. She fought my dominance, gripping my shoulders, pushing up into my kiss and forcing her way into my mouth. Her tongue continued to wordlessly argue with mine. I felt the prickling sensation of my fangs wanting to drop. I stayed them. She would not seduce me. I forbade it. I kept my human teeth firmly in place as I nipped at her lower lip, pulling it into my mouth and sucking it firmly. She moaned in the din of my noisy bar, the press of other people totally forgotten.

"Bad..." she whimpered against me. "Bad idea." I slid my hands down her enticing dress, squeezing her breasts. I liked this fabric. I would tell Pam to buy more things made with it. I found goosebumps on her arms. The chill in the air had tempered her scent during our meeting, but only slightly. I could tell Domingo and every vamp in my bar could smell her overwhelming Fae sweetness. My attempts to fuck her tame had dulled the urgency in her scent, but not the attractiveness. It was testament to her irresistibility that my own proprietary imprint on her did nothing to dissuade them. She still turned every head. Her visit to Faery and her Fae bond to me had no doubt increased its potency.

It was obvious. She wasn't completely human. Her scent enlightened everyone to that fact.

And she was right. I was kissing her. Groping her. In the middle of a vampire bar. I was igniting that flame after lecturing her to think chastely. She was aroused again. Mewling and sliding against me.

I yanked her to me, asserting my ownership in front of this pathetic competition. I felt their eyes licking up her legs and along the pretty dress I'd bought her.

"Mine," I growled into her mouth.

"Prove it," she challenged breathlessly, tugging my neckline low and biting my chest.

I was furious that despite everything, I still felt the urge to oblige her. It was madness. The vamp interest in her, whether Authority or loser club hoppers, compelled me to bite and fuck her in front of the largest possible audience. I didn't need to prove it so viscerally, so why did it torment me so? On top of everything, she'd called me her husband. I was about to remind her of the fact when Pam materialized at our side. Sookie's side of our bond wailed in annoyance, but she wordlessly peeled off me.

"What?" I barked at Pam.

"Ahem," she replied, bored. "Your 'other' guests, Eric?"

The weres in the basement. Fuck. I'd forgotten all about them. Grudgingly, I pulled my hands away from my drug of choice. "Anything I should know before I see them?"

"They're unhappy," Pam deadpanned. "They also lack piquancy."

"How much did you drain?"

"Enough to leave them lucid, but unable to shift."

I turned to Sookie. She was right, my touching her had been a bad idea. She was advertising unnaturally intoxicating sex. Not wanting to excite her further, I brushed my knuckles against her cheek only. "Forgive my lapse. I need you to read the weres. Can you calm yourself again?"

She bit her lip sheepishly. "Am I _that_ noticeable?"

"Darling," I responded, "You are pure narcotic."

She looked embarrassed, dipping her chin. "Can I have an ice cube?" she asked without looking up.

Pam was gone and back in a blink, holding the cube delicately between two fingers. Sookie took it and mumbled a thank-you before leaning into me and discreetly reaching under her dress. She gasped. As did I. She'd nestled the cube between her folds, shocking her body into passivity. I felt her startle. I also went rigid with lust watching her douse her own arousal in such a stark method. Her scent weakened. She shivered as ice and AC battered her from different fronts. Her hand fell away from her thighs. My child clucked her tongue in approval. Pam always did like a show. I held Sookie to me and escorted her to the basement door. I would address her erotic tactics later.

E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S

In the end, it took less work than I'd anticipated. A few broken ribs. I few well-aimed strikes. A few bites, though none were followed through with drinking. As I'd told Sookie, not only would I abstain from other blood, the very taste of others now repulsed me. As I sank my fangs into their necks to show them I was serious, their colorless taste put me in mind of arsenic, not food. So I simply tore at them without swallowing and tossed them to the floor. I spat for good measure. Non-Sookie blood was truly repellent shit.

I kept looking over at her, silently asking if she was reading anything valuable. She bit her lips and jutted her head at the youngest of the men writhing on the concrete. He was ready to talk. I picked him up and placed him on a stool, facing the others.

"Now," I began softly. "You answer my questions and I might not kill all three of you."

The twentysomething were sniffed back his own blood and stayed slumped forward, not looking at me. "Fantastic," I confirmed. I ripped his head up by his hair and aimed it at Sookie. "See the pretty lady? You need to tell me who you work for and why they want her."

"We don't work-,"

I slammed him down into the concrete and flipped him back up onto the stool. He howled as his facial bones crunched into the unforgiving surface. "Bad dog," I chided. "Who you work for. Why they want her."

I sensed Sookie wince at my harshness. I willed my desire for forbearance into her. With weres, there was no other way. They rarely thought passed their aggression and didn't respond to cerebral forms of coercion. Blood and broken bones. That's what it took. I shook him again. "The next one paints my floor with your brain."

He spat blood in impotent fury. "The queen," he gurgled quietly.

The other two dogs growled warningly at him, but I stared them down until they silenced.

I pet him ironically with my other hand. "Sophie Anne. Interesting. She doesn't employ weres, little dog. Why did she hire you?"

"She needed day walkers," he muttered. "She wants the girl."

"Why?"

"She heard rumors."

"You're boring me, little dog. Don't be frugal."

"Edgington's weres. The queen heard that the girl attacked his weres with strange light in her hands. And she heard Edgington day walked after drinking her blood."

I looked at Sookie. Her brow was furrowed in concentration. She met my eyes and nodded. The were was being truthful. Apparently Sophie Anne missed the part of the rumor that explained how Edgington and I nearly cooked after drinking from Sookie. Stupid woman.

"The queen is a fugitive," I replied. "The Authority wants her for fraud and her involvement in the Magister's death. Why would she risk exposure looking for this girl?"

The young were made a noise of annoyance. "The queen's an idiot," he retorted. "Monkey see, monkey want. She also keeps a vampire with her that she wants to punish by annexing the girl."

"The vampire's name?"

"Compton. Bill Compton. She has reinserted him back into her court after he failed to procure Stackhouse. She's furious about his insubordination. She wants the girl for her powers, but also to discipline him. She plans to bond to the girl and make him watch."

A growl issued deep from my chest and the weres cowered at the sound. Sookie's eyes were enormous. Slowly, she nodded again. All true. The queen had just signed her own death warrant. I planned to use every torture method I'd learned in the 1400s; each one a gift of tribute to her memorable reign. I seethed with pleasure. Sookie and I were bonded, there was nothing she could do. And when I eventually felt merciful enough to let her die from her injuries, I would tell her as much.

The young were looked up through his bloodied hair, eyeing Sookie intently as she stood in the corner. "It's true," he grunted through his loose teeth. "I can smell it. You really _are_ a fairy. The Mississippi weres were ri- ,"

His death met him instantly. His neck crunched like a soda can in my fist as I propelled him across the room. The other two had no time to react. I dispatched them in a blur of movement that had Sookie gasping in horror.

Blood pumped steadily from their corpses as I halted amid the carnage. Dripping with its offensiveness, I backed away from her. My clothes, my skin, my hair was matted with it. As much as I wanted to reach for her and ease her racing heart, I would not contaminate her with their filth.

"Jesus, save us. I didn't want this," she spoke softly, looking at the mess with a mournful stare.

I pulled off my t-shirt and wiped my face with it. "I know," I replied. "I did not want it for you, either." I wiped my forearms. "You understand that I had to."

She pulled her gaze from their bodies and looked at me. "Yes," she nodded. "They knew. They knew and you're protecting me."

I nodded with her. "And there will be more. Sophie Anne is an unthinking bitch. Anyone she's told will meet the same fate. Her first."

Sorrow filled her normally bright features. She jutted her chin and looked at me squarely. "Thank you. Thank you for your protection. I'd be dead ten times over without it."

I smiled at her formal gratitude. "You would have had it, with or without your consent."

She smiled sadly. "Because you love me so much?"

"Because I love you so much." The words felt odd in my mouth, but the sentiment was correct.

She gestured to the bodies. "What now? More fresh graves to bury them on top of?"

I rubbed my bloody shirt briskly through my hair. "Pam will tend to this. Right now, I want to get you home." I paused and gave her a meaningful look. "_My_ home."

Her face pinched, a bitter pill being swallowed. "I can't believe this."

"Your home isn't safe, lover. I can't risk you going back."

"No, I know," she looked up at me, eyes shining with building tears. They stung me like silver to the gut. "I mean everything else. Sophie Anne. Bill. Those stupid wolves." She looked down at her hands and flexed them, open and closed. "I'd forgotten that I'd shot at them when they kidnapped me. I should have known they'd talk."

She looked at me plaintively over the bodies. "Hold me?"

I was at her side in an instant. "I'll ruin your dress," I reached out to finger her jaw with my bloodied fingers.

She snorted softly. "Blood. Rips. It was doomed anyway." She looked at my filthy state before shyly nuzzling into my chest. "You're hard on a girl's wardrobe, period."

I chuckled and folded her up in my arms. Sticky blood pressed into every inch of her. She sighed as if I'd covered her in rose petals. "Fuck the dress." Her whisper made me smile.

E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S

I flew her home and bathed her. Blood circled the shower drain as I held her up and made love to her slippery, soapy body. She washed me just a thoroughly, massaging away every speck of gore. Our minds and bodies operated separately, one concentrating on cleanliness and the comfort of soft caresses while the other gorged steadily on pleasure. Sex was so innate between us now, it was fast becoming our natural state.

Her dark eyes never wavered until the end when she climaxed in my arms. Still gripping her, I dropped to my knees, pistoning into her tight heat. Water pelted us from above as I drove in a final time and came screaming between her fluttering walls.

I showed her the acres of clothing I'd bought for her in my closet. She rolled her eyes sweetly and chose a simple yellow dress from its bounty. "Sugar daddy," she muttered as she put it on.

I was impatient for our new ritual.

I flew us up to my roof and made her sit in my lap as the sun broke over the eastern horizon. From my superior view, we could see the entire valley below light up. Sookie let her head fall back against my shoulder, relaxing completely.

She didn't look back to inspect me once for burns.

Her gift was still in effect. Ever in awe of her Choosing me, I rewarded her with another orgasm right there on the roof tiles, my fingers scissoring deep in her pussy as my thumb assaulted her clit.

Sookie had many expressions I cherished, but none rivaled how she looked when she came for me in the sunshine.

When she finally calmed down, I gave the dawn one last, lingering stare before I set us down in the backyard.

She smiled when I took her hands and pressed them into my chest.

"More?" she asked disbelievingly. "God, you're insatiable."

I smiled and nodded. "More. But not the sweet kind, Sookie."

She frowned, her hands tensing on my grey t-shirt. "What do you mean?"

"More weres are in your woods, my love. At least two vampire factions are hunting you. I need to know you can repel them." I bent forward, using my height to overwhelm her. "Let us train. Shoot me."

She arched her neck to take me in, but didn't retreat from my looming frame. She never did.

"What if I can't? Shoot _you_, I mean."

"You must try. We must ascertain if your Light is simply a cannonball, or something more incapacitating."

I didn't give her time to consider. I shoved back from her. I let my fangs click loudly and let my predatory glare slide over her pretty little dress. Her eyes went round and she instinctively bent her knees, a defensive stance.

I hissed at her, full of menace.

Her head went up. Her hands turned to fire at her sides.

My instincts howled in recognition. A Fae. A vampire's oldest foe.

Searing light shot through her dark eyes. _Vampire_, they identified. _A abhorrent enemy_.

I began to circle her. She sidestepped, counter-circling me.

"Shoot me," I growled threateningly.

She jutted her chin, her bare feet sliding carefully along the grass. Her brow went up. "Make me."

I roared, loving her brass, and lunged her at. She never saw me move and before she could gasp, my blunt teeth had her by the throat from behind. I bit her gently, not breaking the skin. "Boo."

I was back out in front of her, resuming our circle. She put her glowing hand to her neck, shaking slightly. "No fair. I wasn't ready."

"You never will be if you wait. We're too fast, sweet one. When you can see me, shoot me. It's the only chance you'll get."

Her hands intensified. "This'll hurt," she taunted, growing braver.

"Ha," I goaded. "All I hear is talk."

Light burst from her hands, two blinding orbs rocketing straight towards me. They hit squarely in my chest. Sweet warmth detonated inside me and I screamed in unbearable pleasure as they dropped me to my knees.

"Shit!" I heard her mutter from my delirium. "Wrong kind."

I shook my head hard, readjusting my blinded eyes. Sookie's love radiated within me, more beautiful than the sun that was slowly rising above our heads.

I chuckled, unsteadily getting to my feet. "Sweet girl," I crooned at her, the Light demanding I sweep her up and make love to her for weeks without rest. "Never shoot anyone with _that _kind."

She screwed her face up and looked at her hands accusingly. "But I tried! I got all mad at you and everything! I even thought about all the times you were cruel and horrible. Even when you let Russell bite me. It didn't work!"

Pushing those unpleasant images away, I came to her slowly and gently turned her towards a large sycamore on the far end of my property.

"Shoot it, then."

Her hands were still at the ready, their lovely yellow glow getting hotter at my instructions. I held her from behind, lining up her target over her head.

"You're in danger. I've met my true death. I cannot help you. You _must _shoot."

She gasped softly. "Don't say that."

"I'm gone, lover. Save yourself."

"No!" Our bond filled with her rage.

I lowered to her ear. "I'll never hold you again. Never bask in your love. I've lost you. They've killed me in their hunger to get you."

Larger, angrier orbs flew from her hands at a stunning speed. Even from my position, I could feel their fury. They launched across my lawn and torpedoed into that ancient tree. It splintered at the trunk, wet chunks of living wood exploding in all directions. The tree wailed as its weight lost all support and collapsed backward into the forest behind it, snapping and filling the air with the smell of lightning contact.

Sookie sobbed and turned into me, clawing at my shirt in her desperation to get closer. "Don't you _dare_ leave me," she commanded furiously.

I watched as the sycamore broke through the smaller foliage and finally crashed onto the forest floor. I held my Fae, rocking her gently, as I marveled at her destruction.

"Never," I swore into her hair, kissing it soundly. "I'll never leave you. Not even in death."

I set her away from me, thumbing her tears away. I smiled gently. "That was magnificent. I need you to try and hit me with the same."

"But…" she gestured to the poor tree behind us. "It worked. I obviously didn't shoot it with love."

"A tree is not a vampire. And the were you shot in Mississippi lived, did he not?"

She sniffed and nodded grudgingly. "Yeah. He lived."

"So," I stroked her cheeks and hair reassuringly. "I still need to assess your power against them. Try again, lover."

She snorted and shooed my hands away. "Talking to me like that doesn't help."

My brow arched. "Very well. Try again…bitch?"

A startled laugh broke through her waning tears. She chuckled, wiping her face. "Cute."

I backed away. Instead of assuming a threatening pose, I merely stood. "Focus on how you felt just now. Don't look at me. Just feel and shoot."

She nodded and closed her eyes. Her hands swirled with power, ready for her command.

"They're coming for you," I said softly. "They'll separate us. They'll imprison you. They'll kill me."

It was the truth. If I was lucky, they would just stop with just my death and remember not to drain her dry. It was a big ask, though. She could easily cause a feeding frenzy.

Her Light amplified. Again, I felt the heat of rage rather than the warmth of love in it. Very encouraging.

"Save yourself," I entreated. "Shoot."

Another set of livid spheres broke from her and slammed into me. I was thrown back twenty feet, clutching my chest as liquid agony filled every nerve. My throat closed up against my scream. I was choking on it.

Sookie was at my side in an instant. She pulled my head into her lap, stroking my hair. "Eric?"

I coughed, fighting for air I didn't need. I tried to lift my arms to encircle her, but they were dead weights at my side. My eyesight lost its sharpness and her image rippled before me in blurred lines. She had delivered one hell of a blow. Despite my acute pain, I was pleased.

"I'm well," I grated out. "It's all right."

She was equal parts of relief and annoyance. She palmed my cheek, looking at me intently. "So then it's not that strong?"

I tried to sit up, but fell back against her thighs. I gave up and settled there, rubbing the back of my head into her lap. "It's strong," I croaked. "Very strong. I'm disoriented and weaker." I smiled at her. "But I'll live."

She smiled back and took my hand, watching it closely.

"Do you see something, lover?"

She shook her head. "Just making sure. I don't want the fairy Powers That Be to think I've broken up with you. They might take your UV protection away if they do."

I closed my eyes, giving myself over to her attention. "Let me know if I begin to fry."

She swatted my hand gently before she rearranged herself more comfortably on the grass. I lay across her legs, letting the sun beat down onto my face. She still had my hand. I could feel her eyes on it as she ran her fingers from my wrist to my bicep where my sleeve began.

I remembered her cat sat like this. I purred softly, just another creature in love with her touch.

She gave a small, exhaling laugh. "Good kitty," she praised me.

I cracked an eye and looked at her. "Shall I have him brought here?"

My jangled nerves sang with pleasure as her fingers danced over my skin. She cocked her head. "You mean kitty Eric?"

"Yes. I assume he needs food."

She bit her lips. "Of course. God, I'm such an idiot. I forgot all about him."

I turned on my side and suddenly I was exactly as I'd wished to be the night I'd watched her through her window. My head in her lap, looking up into her lovely face. Her fingers caressing me, absently loving me for everything that I was. My purr deepened.

"I'll have him fetched today. Along with all of his things."

She smiled gratefully. "My two Erics under one roof. Nothing but cuteness and pointy teeth."

I turned my face into her stomach and inhaled. She smelled so good I could barely stand it. I meant to get up and call my driver to collect her pet. I meant to get up and continue with our training. I needed to see how accurate her shots were at a moving target. I needed to gauge how quickly she could fire again. I needed to see if they taxed her, or if she had an endless supply. I needed to stand up and check my own abilities to see if I'd sustained any lasting damage.

I needed to stand up.

Instead, I curled up against her, my head buried under her breasts. Her hands continued to comb through my hair.

And I purred.


	14. Chapter 14

**A/N:** Lemons for sale! Huge, juicy lemons for sale! Sookie's POV

He made us get up eventually. I felt in his mind that he could have happily spent the day nuzzling my stomach while I fussed over him, but his caution won out in the end. He pulled us to our feet and made me fight him again. I hated every second of it. In order to shoot him with aggression instead of desire, I had to conjure every terrifying thought I could imagine about losing him. I imagined the sun pulled a fast one and roasted him before he could go to ground. I shot him. I imagined that the Authority wrapped him in silver and dropped him to the bottom of the ocean. I shot him. I saw him overwhelmed by weres. I saw him staked by a deranged fanger. I saw him shielding me from all the badness in the world, only to fall in a bloody puddle at my feet. And shot him and shot him and shot him.

The rounds took their toll on him, too.

Every hit I managed to nail him with seemed to drain him, little by little. He got slower. He got sloppier. He was pulling every punch and if a vampire with his skill attacked me for real, I'd be dead before I hit the floor. Still, I was encouraged to see that given the chance, I could hold my own. Especially since most vamps were a fraction of his age. I figured my powers might work better on younger ones.

At one point, he slowed and I caught a glimpse of real weariness in his eyes. Without meaning to, my focus shifted to how much I ached for him instead of how enraged I would be if I lost him. Light shot from my hands before he could react. It burrowed into his body instead of blasting him backwards and he roared as my love shot him straight through with new energy.

"_What did I say?_!" he bellowed at me, his eyes lit up like blue fire.

Uh-oh. The wrong Light again. Instead of pain, I'd infused him with sexy thoughts and vigor. And boy was he mad about it.

Even from across the yard, his inflamed lust struck me and I shrieked like a little girl. Teasingly, stupidly, I turned tail and ran. I'd disobeyed and distracted him again. I knew from his face I was in trouble.

I was surprised that I made it as far as I did. Ten feet, maybe, before I was tackled from behind and dragged to the ground. Squealing and screaming, I fought against his hold as he ripped his jeans and his wrist wide open. Coating his massive erection in his own dripping blood, Eric shoved me to my hands and knees, yanked my yellow dress up, and plunged deep.

White light exploded in my eyes. I screamed. Ecstasy tore me in half as my lover pistoned brutally behind me. Our bond was a mess of involuntary instinct. He _had_ to fuck me. I'd shot him with one too many love darts to give him any choice in the matter. Gripping my hips, he pumped ruthlessly, cursing my name between his clenched teeth. And as only Eric could teach, I learned what it was to experience vampire blood vaginally. It absorbed directly into me, into the one place it would cause the most havoc.

"_ERRRIC!_" My own voice was a primal shout. From the moment he'd entered me, I orgasmed. I rode a devastating wave a pleasure that refused to dissolve, and as he continued to ride me at his punishing pace, I realized that as he thrust his blood into my ravaged core, my climax would not end until he finished.

So I screamed nonstop.

"_You see?_" he roared at me, yanking me into his powerful hips. "_This is what it feels like! This is how badly you affect me!_"

I barely heard him over myself. I couldn't stop sobbing. My core remained in the throes of climax and continued to clench around him, locking him deep inside me.

I'd filled him with light, now he was retaliating by filling me with blood. He was killing me in the most beautiful way imaginable.

"Eric," I sputtered softly, trying to reach him through his mania. "Please, baby. It's too much."

He didn't ease up. "I know," he hissed, leaning down to my shoulder. "Blinding, isn't it?"

"Yes," I moaned loudly.

"You can't think, can you? Can't see passed your desire for me. Say it!"

"No," I shook my head, ready to collapse under our colliding bodies. "I can't."

He sped up. My moans graduated to screams once again as my easing orgasm reignited into paralyzing pleasure.

"Now you know," he growled angrily, slamming deep and letting himself come spectacularly hard. "You know what it is to love you."

I sobbed like my heart was breaking as he unloaded in a prolific burst. I felt it coat me, showering my scorching walls with its soothing presence. I couldn't stop convulsing. "Eric." It was the only word I could summon. The only word I could remember.

"Sssookie," he hissed sweetly, stilling his thrusts, letting me finally descend from my height. I panted for air. My head hung low. Blades of grass tickled my forehead as I slumped before him like a rag doll. Finally free from his enslaving invasion, I pulled my dress back down and curled up into a fetal position, willing my disorientation away.

I heard his zipper close up. He knuckled his way around my side and pried open my curled form. "Gimme," he ordered gently, and burrowed his head into my middle, curling up into a ball just like me. My eyes were closed tight, so my fingers found their way to his head on their own. I cupped it reverently, needing to touch the man who tore me to pieces.

We were tired. Training and warm sunshine were conspiring against us. I felt myself float away.

We slept.

E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S

_Sookie._

_Hmmm_, I thought to my name. _Not now. _ I was warm. I was happy. Whatever it was, it could wait.

"_Sookie._"

"Uuuh," I made a whining noise of annoyance. "Go away."

"Sookie."

I opened my eyes. The sun was high above us now. I was still on my side, which now ached from lack of circulation. My arm was asleep. Great. A mess of sandy blonde hair was nestled into the curve of my body. My fingers were tangled in it. Gently, I extracted them and smoothed it over. I smiled softly. My vampire was sleeping in the sun with me. The novelty would take years to wear off, no doubt.

"Sookie."

"Jeez, _what?_" I looked up from my grassy bed, straight into the eyes of my kin. She was sitting beside us, as if we were a friendly threesome enjoying a picnic.

"Claudine!" I shot up to a sitting position. Eric's head fell naturally into my lap. I cupped his head in my hands in pure instinct. Fairies hated vampires. I clutched him to me, his long frame sprawled in all its vulnerability. _No_, my mind wailed. _Don't touch him!_

Claudine held her hands up gracefully, the picture of peace. "Calm yourself, cousin. I have no interest in harming your Chosen." She smiled and framed my face in her hands. "It's you I've come to see."

I expelled a breath and reached up to cup her hand with mine. Thank Christ.

"Claudine," I repeated more kindly. "It's so good to see you."

"And you," she responded. Her eyes dipped meaningfully to my lap and she smiled. "I see you've been busy since you left us."

I laughed sheepishly. She could say that again. "I know. Our people came to me the other night. They told me about what's happened between us," I gestured to him. "Weird, huh?"

Her brows arched. "You find your Choice weird? Why?"

"Uh, maybe because you told me fairies and vampires damn near destroyed each other some years back?"

Claudine waved her hand dismissively. "A long time ago, between only pure-blooded Fae and Vampire."

"Did any of them ever manage to hook up between death feuds?" I asked doubtfully.

Claudine chuckled and shook her head. "In that regard, you are the first. But it's understandable. You complement each other quite well. His mind is silent to you, and your blood enthralls him. Were you pure-blooded Fae, it would unhinge him. With a hybrid, he can exercise more control." She held her hands apart, as if all were settled by that rationale.

I huffed and shrugged. "I guess. Still. I thought the Fae would be objecting more to our union."

She shook her head. "It is not our place. A Fae bond is a sacred construct. We have no more influence over it than you do, really. He may have been your Choice, but in a fated world, Choice is merely destiny in disguise. You were meant to have this man. The bond would not have materialized if he posed any threat to you."

"What if I'd Chosen a human? Or a were? What would have happened?"

She shrugged. "I cannot tell you. You Chose Eric."

"Anything else I should know about our bond? Any more...surprises?"

But her attention had shifted away from me. Her lovely face was entranced by the sunlit vampire stretched out on my lap. Slowly, her hand floated above his face, her expression fathomless. "I remember him from olden times," she murmured.

"He's an old vampire, that's true," I said, watching her hand.

She shook her head vacantly. "No. Before then. I mean the man who inhabited this body before his turning."

My brow raised in surprise. "You mean, like _Eric_ Eric? _Viking_ Eric? You _knew_ him?"

She smiled at my tone. "You sound amazed. Do you not remember that humans and supernaturals move through this world together?"

"Sure, but..." I blinked in wonder and looked down at him. "I mean, what are the odds? How did you know him?"

"_Of_ him, cousin. I knew _of_ him. The Fae moved more freely between realms a thousand years ago. This man was known to many."

"How? I mean, what were people saying about regular old Eric Northman way back then?"

Her smile grew nostalgic. "That was not his name," she replied. "Only recently did the vampire world rename him."

I must have been gaping at her, because her expression grew patient at my shock. "Did you think Northman was a thousand-year-old Norse name, Sookie? Does it not sound conveniently English?"

"I..." I didn't finish. My fingers stroked his cheek. My bonded, my lover, my Chosen. I didn't even know his real name.

She guessed my thoughts. "He was always Eric," she reassured me softly. "In his old tongue, he was Eiríkr inn sigrsæli. In modern Swedish, he was Erik Segersäll." She paused and let the strange syllables work their way into my head. "In history books," she added, "he was Eric the Victorious, ancient king of Sweden."

I blinked rapidly, forbidding any tears to form. She saw them forming and finished quietly, "Only in the last few hundred years was he known as Northman. It identifies his origins. Edgington did the same, taking his name from the current name of his ancient birthplace in England." She stopped, her eyes clouding with centuries of memory. "I am not old enough. The Neolithic name of Edgington's land is long dead. Extinct for three thousand years."

I looked at the long, imposing body of the man between us. I had never asked him. Never even considered anything beyond what I saw of him now. He was Viking, sure I knew that, but hearing Claudine speak of him in such..._mortal_...terms...

My tears fell anyway. Damn them.

"What..?" I sniffed and backhanded my face. "What was he like? Eric."

"Ah," she looked at him fondly. "He was a warrior, your man was. Hard. He was ruthless to his enemies, but unusually, very merciful to those he conquered." Her hand returned to floating idly above him, this time over his silent heart. "He even took Denmark before his end. To this day, the Danes deny he had any such control over their lands." She looked back to me. "He was fatally wounded in 995AD. If Godric had not taken in interest in him, Eiríkr inn sigrsæli would have bled to death on a funeral pyre on a cold autumn night of that year."

I sniffed again and Claudine smiled kindly. "Instead, he lies here. With you."

"I never knew."

"None do, cousin, except for those who lived during the events."

"I never even asked him."

"Your love for him is new, Sookie. You would have eventually."

I curled over my lap and kissed his forehead softly. His skin felt soft under my lips and I smiled against him. "Why did Godric choose him?"

"Silly Sookie," she chided kindly. "Vampires are not _that_ different from humans. They value uniqueness and physical beauty. They turn those who would make excellent additions to their race. Eric is beautiful even by today's standards. Can you imagine seeing him in a time when beauty was such a rarity? His height. His body. His temperament. He was unnaturally stunning. Godric, like all vampires, wanted such a child. He was very lucky. Eric was a rare specimen."

Claudine's hand finally came to rest against his chest. I watched her, my instincts still ready to defend him, even though I knew him to be safe. She cocked her head thoughtfully. "You have Chosen well with this man. Vampire or no. He is fearless. He will defend you to the death."

The thought slipped out uninvited. "Unlike Bill?"

She blinked at the name. "No. Bill Compton would have defended you to the death," she drew out slowly. "However, Bill is not fearless. He is a conscripted soldier, not a warrior. He is indecisive. But most of all," her eyes twinkled mischievously at me, "Bill lacks imagination."

I huffed in disbelief at her playful indictment. "That's his worst crime? A lack of imagination?" I could think of one or two that seemed more grievous.

"In these times, with your problems, a lack of imagination is a death sentence, cousin." She gestured to Eric between us. "Does he not prove so?"

I laughed softly and stroked his face. "To say Eric is imaginative is an understatement."

"Precisely. If there is a way to salvage this situation and save both your skins, Eric Northman will find it."

When she put it like that, I couldn't disagree. The man was a master of wiggle room. He made me think of all those clever animals - jackals and ravens and octopi and whatnot - the ones that constantly escaped captivity, or stole food from impossible places, or solved problems in unnervingly smart ways. That was Eric. Too damn clever for anyone's comfort.

I gave her a hopeful look. "Any advice for us tonight? The Authority are coming. They're close to figuring out what I am."

"Given your current situation, I'd suggest you look at the bigger picture. Have faith, cousin."

"Bigger picture of what? How is the Authority not big picture?"

But she was already rising to her feet and dusting her hands. "You have bonded with a vampire, in more ways than one," she gestured to my ring. "Fate has plans for you, Sookie. I doubt it would waste such an unprecedented union by siding with the Authority."

"Fate sounds like a swell guy," I retorted cynically. "You think he'll make an appearance on our behalf tonight? Let Domingo know that he's not 'bigger picture' material?"

The air was getting heavier around Claudine. She was getting ready to pop away. She smiled one last time. The weight of ancient love pressed down from her eyes onto me. "Trust, Sookie. That is all I can offer."

A loud pop.

And she was gone.

E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S

I watched over him until he woke a few hours later.

He was astounded by his own laxity. Dying in the sun, only a small human girl for protection, out in the open, he questioned his judgment out loud.

"Hey!" I sputtered. "Small human girl who kicked _your_ ass all day, buddy. I'll thank you to remember."

A smile broke through his consternation and he pulled me and kissed the top of my head. "I don't doubt your abilities, lover. Just my own common sense. We're not safe in the open."

I told him about Claudine's visit. Most of it, anyway. I left out her little history lesson. When we had time, I wanted to hear it in his words. "So see? Claudine would have helped me. We were perfectly safe."

He clearly didn't agree, but let the matter drop. "Go to the kitchen," he changed the subject. "Eat."

When the sun went down (another quick trip to the roof to watch), Eric chose a car from his Olympic-sized garage and drove us to Fangtasia. I have no idea the make or model. Shiny silver. Rumbling. Muscular. Smelled like leather and money got together and made a fragrant baby. That's all I could tell you. When we got there, he wasted no time pulling Pam into his office. She sat mutely through his entire explanation. He and I were now permanently bonded. Both their way and my way. My bond had gifted him with the ability to day walk again. Sophie Anne was after me. Bill was back under her thumb. I was to live with Eric until further notice. And the Authority would be waltzing through the door any minute, probably to haul us off for questioning.

Pam sat through it all, expressionless.

When Eric finished, she finally spoke.

"You never ask about _my_ day."

I snorted into my gin and tonic. Quickly covering my mouth, I mumbled an apology. She and Eric eyed each other knowingly until she bowed her head to him. They had an understanding. She turned to me and I was amazed to see something akin to indebtedness in her eyes. She bowed to me as well. "For your gift to my maker, thank you, Sookie. You have made him more powerful than any vampire on earth."

I blushed. "We'll see about that. But you're welcome. I'm happy to have something of value to give him."

Eric jerked me close and buried his lips in my ear. "_You_ are valuable, lover. Day walking be damned."

I blushed harder and turned my face into his chest. Their formidable gratitude was hard to bear up under. Luckily, they weren't prone to gushing and quickly got on with our next step. We needed a plan. Several plans.

"Dispatching them is easiest," Pam spoke of the Authority officials. Hell, she was probably talking about everybody.

Eric smiled knowingly from his desk behind tented fingers. "Dispatching them is funnest, Pam. Don't be whimsical. We need something more permanent."

I spoke from his sofa. "As long as we stay here, can't we just answer them honestly? Won't that satisfy them? I mean, it's not like any of us did anything against vampire law."

Pam's eyes slid over me. "I think we can safely assume that the Mississippi fuck job is a pretense for investigating _you_, Sookie."

"But without tasting me and without seeing my Light, which I sure as fuck won't demonstrate, how will they ever prove anything? I'm Eric's. Aside from questioning, they can't touch me. Right?"

Eric's tongue slid out over his bottom lip when I called myself his. At my question, he nodded smugly. "Correct. No one may touch you without my permission."

"Pity," Pam grumbled.

Eric shot her a withering gaze. I merely smiled politely. Ladies take compliments, no matter the source. "So? Let's just hear them out and see where it leads."

I could feel Eric's irritation at not having a better plan. His 'imaginative' brain saw many contingencies, all of which could end badly. He sighed heavily and eyed Pam. "I need you to find our former monarch. It shouldn't be difficult. That whore practically sheds diamonds and angry creditors."

Pam nodded. "And when I do?"

"Reconnaissance only. I won't have you spooking the cattle. Report to me when you discover her whereabouts. Her death is mine."

She nodded again. The subtleties of their relationship escaped me sometimes. They were so in tune that they often skipped talking entirely.

"Go out front. Inform me when they arrive. After they do, you may begin your hunt."

The beautiful vampire's eyes glittered at the prospect. At her dismissal, she turned and walked out. She shocked me by patting my shoulder on her way. I turned to watch her close the door. When I turned back around, I jumped a mile in the air. Eric was on the sofa beside me.

"Christ!" I stuttered at his sudden closeness. "I really hate it when ya'll do that."

He chuckled and palmed the nape of my neck, dragging me to him. "Too bad."

He tugged me into straddling his lap and buried his nose into my throat. He did this so often, I was starting to question when he was hungry or when he simply wanted to inhale me. I pushed my inquisitiveness into our bond. "Which do you want?" I pressed the question against the delicate rim of his ear.

He was nuzzling into my loose hair, dragging his entire face along my skin. His stubble tickled terribly. I cupped the back of his head and giggled. Behind closed doors, Eric Northman was one tactile vampire.

He inhaled deeply and groaned. "I want both. But I shouldn't drink you. It's too soon since yesterday morning and I should keep a clear head."

I tsked his rationing. "I've had plenty of yours since then. I'm fine. You should drink. You need your strength."

"I get more than strength from you. I get drunk."

I grinned wide and framed his face in my hands, pulling him away from my neck and grabbing hold of his gaze. "Open," I ordered, just like a dentist.

He smirked and opened his mouth obediently. I gently shook his head once. "Drop 'em."

_Click_

His fangs fell into their heart-shaped place.

I grinned even wider and lowered my mouth to his, kissing those damned alluring points with the softest touch.

I pulled back before he could reciprocate and brought his head to my throat. "Drink your dinner or you don't get any ice cream."

His whole body rumbled with amusement as he put his mouth to my pulse and did as he was told. As usual, he bit so delicately that my nerves didn't register any injury. Instead, they quivered with pleasure as his warm mouth pulled carefully on my blood flow. I plastered myself to him and clutched his head possessively, murmuring my pleasure as I gave to my man. Our arms went around each other and we settled into our wordless communion.

He grunted and purred in those odd vampire timbres, informing me that he was happy. I felt him tap our bond and access my body's reaction to him. Judging from the clinical concentration I felt in him, he was monitoring my vital signs and overall well being. He wanted to make sure he didn't sap too much of my strength. I opened my side wide for his inspection, stroking his nape and shoulders in silent encouragement.

After ten minutes, he withdrew his fangs and licked his puncture marks. He went to prick his finger to draw his own blood, but I stopped him. "Leave it," I said.

He looked up at me. "I wish to heal you," he replied.

I nodded, then shook my head. "I know. But I want them to see it. I want _everyone_ to see it."

Approval shone hotly in his eyes. He licked them again, ensuring that they sealed. They went stiff with his saliva. I nodded and moved to dismount him, but he grabbed my hips, trapping me in place. "They will not take you, lover. I'll have their heads before that happens."

I smiled softly and kissed his stern mouth, coaxing it soft and sweet again. "I know, Eric. No matter what happens, I'm yours. I love you and I'm yours. Remember that."

He returned my kiss as if I'd done nothing to slake his appetite. He was hard beneath me and his tongue was all but fucking my mouth. I pushed at his shoulders. "You'll make me all sex-smelling again," I warned him. With him, I was a ticking time bomb of lust. He should know better than to provoke me with his talented mouth.

He threw himself backwards and barked in a different language. Sounded like a swear, based on his annoyance. He cupped my jaw and glared at me. "I'll have you tonight, dammit. I forbid you to fuck another ice cube in my presence."

I smirked and got off him, smoothing out my dress. "Liked that, did you?" I teased him coyly.

I could tell we were in for another delicious play fight when a knock struck the door.

"Enter!" he snapped.

Pam opened the door and stepped in. "They're here."


	15. Chapter 15

**A/N:** Alas, it's time for some trouble. Eric's POV

Sookie put her hair up before exiting my office. With her ponytail sweeping her nape, my bite could be seen clearly on the sleek skin of her throat. She examined it in her compact, making sure nothing obscured it. I said nothing, but conceit slithered through me. My hellcat may fight me for every inch of our partnership, but when it counted, she gladly acknowledged my claim to her. I could feel her pride as she preened at her reflection. My mark pleased her. Her wish to brandish it pleased _me_.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. The text informed me that my driver had retrieved her pet and he was now in my home, complete with food and water. There had been no evidence of Sophie Anne's weres during his visit. I hoped my slaughter of three of their number gave the rest of the pack serious fucking pause.

We left my office and moved through the crowd of leather and liquor.

There were two of them at my VIP booth when Sookie and I approached. Domingo, of course, in an even fancier suit than the night before, and another vampire with classic Nubian features and no synthetic blood squaring up his coaster. No fanger, either. He sat without refreshment, a silent communique that he wasn't here for the ambiance. His expression was devoid of any thought whatsoever, flat as a mirror. I had the powerful and rare sensation of being proximal of not only someone older than myself, but significantly so. Four thousand years ago, vampires had operated almost entirely along the Nile, moving through Egypt and the Sudan as trade and industry drew more humans into concentrated populations. Upper Nubia was invaded by the ancient Egyptians when the pyramids were brand new. Vampires watched from the sidelines, choosing from among the best warriors on either side, draining them and burying them in the sand so they could rise anew.

This man had the aura of being one of the remaining few of those turned at that time.

The Authority wasn't fucking around. They'd sent a ringer. They weren't about to let my daunting age set a tone of seniority. They now had jurisdiction _and_ primacy on their side. I buried my distaste at their tactics and chose my most affable smile from my arsenal and escorted my beloved to the bench opposite theirs.

"Paulo," I greeted informally to the Spanish vampire. "A pleasure to see you again. You remember my bonded?" I gestured to Sookie and she smiled tightly. She still found it unnatural not to offer her hand, and as a result her discomfort with spartan words echoed in her features when addressing us.

"Hello again," she said politely.

Domingo nodded and gestured to his companion. "This is Okalo Massawa. Attaché to the late Magister."

Massawa blinked in response and said nothing. Sookie dipped her head and widened her strained smile. "A pleasure, sir."

He blinked again. "Miss Stackhouse. Sheriff Northman." His accent betrayed nothing, his English clear and distilled as bottled water. Like me, he had removed all traces of his origins in his speech.

I bowed my head, our signal of honor to an elder, and worked my smile into a look of contrition. "My condolences for the loss of your employer."

Domingo gestured to the glass of water and Tru Blood waiting before us. "I took the liberty."

As we settled into our seats, Sookie diligently took a sip of her drink. "Thank you."

I took the opportunity to reestablish my claim. "No thank you," I snapped for the waitress to remove my bottle. "I've fed."

My woman responded beautifully with an angelic smile for our guests. She did not look at me, nor did she modestly cover the evidence of my meal. She sat picture perfect, waiting for our meeting to commence.

Domingo's eyes flicked over her throat. "So I see."

Massawa sat rigidly and didn't even glance her way. "Shall we begin?"

Domingo inclined his head and looked pointedly at Sookie.

"I prefer we don't spend the whole evening square dancing around our purpose, so I'll be blunt. The were pack working for Edgington have been captured by the Authority. Several of them insist that Miss Stackhouse attacked them with balls of light. The Authority have sent us to ascertain her supernatural status and make a decision regarding her connection to the ranking vampires involved in the subsequent events."

I had no time to form a reply. Sookie was already ahead of me.

"What are you talking about?" she snipped angrily. "They attacked _me_! I was kidnapped by Russell and taken to his mansion! I didn't 'attack' them with anything!"

"You will stay calm," Domingo rebuked her. "We would not be here if we weren't concerned by their accounts. Too many of them believe you are an anomaly for us to ignore."

"I don't give a damn what they believe," she spat haughtily. "Those dogs can go to hell. I had no 'connection' with any of those people except Bill Compton and Sheriff Northman. The rest were up to God knows what, and I had _nothing_ to do with it!"

Massawa gazed evenly at me. "You were there at the mansion."

I nodded. "To ask permission to hunt Compton in the king's territory. He was still considered missing at the time. It was my duty to locate him."

His lack of response told me he wanted further details. "I found Compton at the mansion of his own free will. My responsibility to him ended there."

Still, Massawa sat. Domingo only had eyes for Sookie. "Why did they want you in the first place? A human woman?"

Sookie lost some of her bravado at his question. She looked down at her water. "Bill Compton had sworn his fealty to Russell. He broke up with me shortly afterward. He said..." She took an unsteady breath and I couldn't tell if her flawless delivery was genuine or not. She looked up with liquid eyes. "He said he no longer wanted me. He said I couldn't satisfy him the way a vampire could and he'd chosen to return to his maker. But I guess Russell wanted leverage over him, just in case he was scheming and just in case I still meant something to him. Russell kidnapped me for that reason."

Domingo noted her watering eyes. "As leverage only?"

She sniffed and turned her head away, discreetly wiping her cheeks. "Russell liked all his pawns on one board. He took me in case I proved useful."

He and Massawa sat impassively, mulling this over. I did not reveal how badly Sookie's tears bothered me. I loathed it when she cried. Perhaps because her tears were always for Compton. I longed to pull her close and kiss her salty lips until she smiled for me. Later, I would do so.

"What was Compton's interest in you, girl?" Massawa's voice startled her.

She sniffed again and shrugged. "What's any vampire's interest in a human? He liked me. I liked him. I guess in the end, my feelings were stronger than his."

I knew this to be a lie. Compton was an unholy wreck without her. Sookie was underplaying their relationship to hide Sophie Anne's involvement. To admit Bill's true intention would only lead to questions about the queen's interest in her. She knew this. I sent my support through our bond, filling it with love and empathy as she spun her tale.

Domingo cleared his throat loudly. "What of the claim that you summoned supernatural shots of energy from your hands when they came to abduct you? That Edgington took a special, personal interest in you that had nothing to do with Bill Compton? What have you to say to that?"

There it was. The real motive behind their questions.

Sookie glared indignantly. "Did these weres also tell you that they were off their asses on V most of the time?"

Domingo pulled a face of disgust and Massawa's eyes flashed briefly. "That is a very serious accusation. What is your proof?"

"The proof is that I saw it myself in a were bar in Jackson," she replied. "While looking for information about Bill's whereabouts, Russell Edgington himself showed up and poured his own blood into shot glasses like he was a vampire bottle of Jim Beam. The whole bar went crazy on it. You can ask Alcide Herveaux . He escorted me there under Eric's instruction and he saw the whole thing."

Massawa glanced at me. "Is this true?"

"I did not see it," I responded diplomatically. "However the were Herveaux is reliable and my bonded is unimpeachable. If she says that is what happened, then you may be assured it's the truth."

The two officials were silent. I pushed our edge. "Edgington kept an unusually large pack under his control. Given weres' predilection for V, it would be reasonable to assume that the king would supply them to ensure their loyalty."

Domingo nodded once in agreement. "And you're sure you saw him spill his _own_ blood?"

Sookie nodded vehemently. "Directly into the glasses. He did it onstage after riling them up with one of his speeches."

Massawa turned to Domingo fractionally. "Such potent blood would disable the mind of a mortal quite severely."

Domingo exhaled in annoyance. "Miss Stackhouse, did the weres...devolve after ingesting it?"

She nodded again. "It was awful. The pull to shift and participate was strong. Even Alcide fought hard against it, and he didn't even drink any. They were nothing short of crazy."

Domingo stewed on this unpleasant development while Massawa continued to gaze fathomlessly at Sookie. He seemed perfectly indifferent to weres on V. His statuesque figure leaned forward a single inch.

"Why have you sought the Sheriff's claim, girl?"

Sookie blinked. She had not expected him to ask. "Because I...I need him. This supe world is too big for me. It scares me. I need someone like Eric and he offered his claim to me. But I asked for his bond because I love him."

I stiffened. The officials cocked their heads. She had introduced a foreign concept into the conversation.

Domingo snorted. "After so short a separation from Bill Compton? You ask us to believe this?"

Sookie snookered them further with a wan smile. "Bill hurt me, it's true. But in the end, he did me a favor. Bill couldn't protect me from this world. He lied to me. He kept things from me that proved harmful. In that sense, he's nothing like Eric. Eric is strong. He protects me. And unlike Bill, he prefers human lovers to vampires." Her words echoed the idealist sentiments of a romance novel. It was perfect.

Massawa looked at me. "Why have you given it? Your bond."

I looked fondly at Sookie and spoke the truth. "She amuses me."

And there we were. A silly little girl and her indulgent vampire possessor. Our cover story was so common and uninteresting, there was no doubting its authenticity.

Massawa seemed to accept this without quarrel and with little interest. Instead, his eyes narrowed. "You witnessed the death of our late Magister."

I dipped my chin, relieved we were moving on to my own innocuous account. "Correct."

"At Russell's hand. In your basement."

"Yes. The Magister was awaiting my return with information about Compton's disappearance. Russell insisted Sophie Anne and I accompany him here. Once we arrived, Russell silvered the Magister and forced him to marry he and queen. After he'd done so, the Magister cursed Russell's madness and, in a fit of rage, Russell murdered him."

"You did nothing to stop him?"

Damn fucking right, I didn't. I left out that the Magister had been torturing Pam while waiting for me. I would have killed him myself, were it not for his position. Luckily, Russell proved indifferent to his status and liquified him.

I looked as contrite as possible. "I had no way of knowing Russell would react so heinously. But even if I'd suspected his intent, Russell is three times my age. I'm ashamed to say I would not have been capable of subduing him. Not even with Sophie Anne and my child present."

They processed this.

"You have incapacitated Edgington." Massawa again.

"Yes. He is no longer a threat."

He bowed fractionally to me. "Our gratitude."

Very encouraging. I took his acknowledgment humbly. "My pleasure."

The four of us sat in silence for a moment. I felt Sookie shift discreetly at my side. She glanced at me and pressed her lips. "Would you gentlemen excuse me? Human stuff."

Through our bond, I felt her sincere need to use the ladies' room. I offered her my hand from my seated position as she stood from the booth. She smiled politely. "I'll be right back."

She disappeared through the crowd towards the bathrooms. Domingo watched her go. "And odd woman," he muttered to no one in particular.

I chuckled. "Do you not prefer odd over ordinary?"

For the first time since we met, he smiled. "Very true. Immortality makes one appreciate the unusual."

I smiled faintly in return. "While my bonded may not have these abilities the were pack claim, I am satisfied with her human charms. She's quite defiant. I enjoy the challenge."

"So you testify that she possesses none of the traits we've described?"

"Absolutely," I lied blithely. "A shame. I would have liked to claim such a creature. But alas, she is human. Sweet blood, excellent sex and a delightful mind, but human. I will attest to that."

The magic of Sookie's scent still clung lightly to the air. I prayed for the first time in an age that they did not question it beyond what I just explained. Massawa seemed an exceptional threat. He seemed to see everything, yet say nothing. My prayer also included that his age didn't signify a greater understanding of fairies. Edgington and myself were quite old and hadn't guessed her heritage. Perhaps fate would smile on me and grant Massawa the same ignorance.

Domingo, mercifully, appeared satisfied. He sighed and sipped his detestable bottled B positive. "We may have more questions as the investigation continues. The queen is still wanted and we have yet to locate Compton. Will you make yourself available, should we require you?"

I nodded graciously. "Naturally. My only interest is restoring order. I think we've endured enough bullshit and I'm happy to help where I can."

He went to rise, but Massawa's voice stopped him. "She claims to love you. Are you in love as well?"

My eyes snapped to his. The unwanted feeling of exposure crawled on my skin. I disliked his question. It was irrelevant. And revealing. And unfortunately, in my case as well as Compton's, it was better to admit to the fact in order to hide the bigger truth. Admitting I loved Sookie would lay bare my own weakness for the sake of protecting her secret. For Compton, a sullen romantic who shunned his own kind, the admission hadn't cost him much. For me to admit such a vulnerability was damaging to my status. But I had no choice.

I let my mask of indifference drop. I showed them a disgruntled sincerity that I hid from all except Pam and Sookie. I met his gaze frankly. "Yes. The woman bewitches me. I concede that I love her and offered my bond to procure her permanently."

My vexation amused him. His lips rolled fractionally towards a smile. "You would not have it so?"

"I have no interest in love ordinarily. I'm afraid she conjured it in me against my will."

"Such a powerful creature, to conquer a vampire of your superiority."

I heard the lightness of his tone. He meant only to mock me out of affability. I snorted with bad grace, accepting the jibe. "When I first met her, she hated and spurned me. Never has a woman dismissed me out of hand while showing no fear of me. She knew I'd slaughtered thousands, yet she scolded me like a child. I admit, it intrigued me."

Both men chuckled at my concession.

Suddenly, my bond to her spiked with surprise and I jerked my head to one side. She was stunned. And frightened. I leapt to my feet, prepared to tear through the crowd to reach her, but suddenly her fear subsided. The ghost of her adrenaline vanished from my blood as quickly as it had appeared. I tapped the bond for proximity. She was still nearby. I slowly sat back down, reaching out to her, questioning if she was all right.

Nothing. I pressed harder, pushing my will into her mind while my guests watched me questioningly.

I did not sense an answer.

My urgent probes met nothing but silence.


	16. Chapter 16

**A/N**: Sookie's POV. And she's in Chez Crazi.

"Fuck, this is bad."

"Shut up. Just keep your shit together. We still have a job to do."

"But we're too late! You saw it. Fuck, you can smell it."

"Not our problem. We were told to get her. We got her. They're going to pay us, goddammit, I don't care if she's damaged goods. Just...put a scarf around it or something."

In the depths of some cold black hole I was unconsciously swimming through, I felt someone grab me by the hair and yank my head up. I moaned as my kinked muscles shrieked in annoyance. A rough piece of material was threaded under my neck and tied in a knot under my jaw. My head fell back down onto a hard, corrugated surface. The throb of an engine vibrated underneath. I was moving. Moving?

"It won't make a difference," the first voice whined. "You can smell him on her from a mile away."

The second, harsher voice replied, "I said shut the fuck up!"

"Eric," I groaned quietly. Where was he? What the hell was going on?

"Fuck!" the second voice cursed again. "Give her more. Don't let her summon him."

A rag was shoved into my nose. It reeked of ether-like fumes and I struggled against my bound hands and legs to escape it. "Eric!" I coughed into it. I tried to make my mushy thoughts focus on him. The voice was right. Eric could find me more easily if I was awake enough to tap our bond and call him. The rag was pushed harder into my face. It was no use. My eyes watered and my mind went dim.

I blacked out.

E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S

I woke up on a hard floor. Everything hurt. I groaned in pain, my arms and legs wailed from a lack of circulation as I pulled at them. They were tied up tightly, my arms especially. They felt smothered and hot, and it took me a moment to realize that I wasn't just tied up, I was in some kind of straight jacket. I tried to open my eyes as I squirmed on the freezing tiles beneath me. I heard muffled voices above me. One was extremely pissed off. The other two were whiny and full of explanations.

I blinked. Everything was extremely bright and blurry. Through red, swollen eyes, I looked up, trying to see who was talking.

A woman's voice, the angry voice, didn't seem to notice. "Did you think you could fool me? That you could just but a BandAid over it and I'd be none the wiser? You fucking idiots! She's been _bonded_! Any vampire can tell!"

I recognized one of the whiny voices from before. "Look, it's not our fault. You said to get her, so here she fucking is. So who cares if Northman claimed her? She's yours now."

The woman bent down to me. I caught a glimpse of fiery red hair before I was jerked up by my own ponytail. I screamed hoarsely as she shook me at the others. "Claimed? You think this is just a fucking claim? He's bonded to her, you stupid little dog! She's useless to me now!"

She dropped me. Without my arms to catch me, I fell hard onto my side, the air rushing out of my lungs on impact. I felt someone jerk the makeshift scarf off my neck. With as much strength as I could muster, I jutted my throat out, displaying my treasured bite to everyone standing around me.

"Eric!" I shouted groggily.

I was calling for him, sure. But I was also flipping this woman the verbal finger. Whoever she was, she was right about one thing. If she was here to claim me, she was a day late and a few dollars short. This was Eric's mark on my neck and Eric's blood in my veins. I was his. Fuck this redheaded bitch.

My vision was clearing up. I could make out two dark haired men and a beautiful, pale woman above me. We were in some kind of indoor tanning salon, or so it looked like. Extremely bright light, white walls, high ceilings, and...were those palm trees in pots?

"Who the fuck are you?" I mumbled at her.

She glared down at me. Her flawless features were coiled up into an ugly mask of rage. Her pastel, gauzy dress looked ridiculous when paired with such a monstrous face. She sneered at me. "Watch your mouth or I'll drain you where you lay."

I coughed and tried to sit up, but the jacket wouldn't let me. I fought it fruitlessly and cursed. All of those hours Eric had spent with me that day, helping me hone my skills, all for nothing. My hands were bound tightly into my sides. I couldn't shoot. I never even saw what hit me. One minute, I'd been exiting the ladies' room at Fangtasia, the next minute, someone grabbed me from behind and shoved chloroform (I assumed) into my face. Shocked, I'd inhaled without thinking. I'd only put up the tiniest struggle before the drug did its job. I was in a truck, barely conscious of two idiots arguing, before I realized I'd been kidnapped right from under Eric's nose.

The worst had happened. I looked up and made the obvious guess. "You're Sophie Anne, aren't you? You're the bitch who sent Bill after me and thinks I'm a fairy, right?"

She pulled a knife out of nowhere and leaned down to cut my leg ropes free. "_Thinks_ you're a fairy, Sookie? Come now," she replied acidly, "Let's not play coy."

She knelt next to me and grabbed my chin, forcing my head up to meet her icy gaze. "You are Fae. Partly, anyway. Under the Sheriff's stink, I can smell you. Your essence is nothing but sweetness and sunshine."

I scoffed, not backing away from her snarling closeness. "Too bad you didn't pull this caper a week ago." I laughed and she slammed me into the tiles. My head exploded with pain. Still, I managed to keep chuckling. I was wide awake now. I was injured and a little bit scared. And I was broadcasting like nobody's business. Eric would come now. I was a pulsing beacon of damsel in distress.

"Too bad I had the hots for Eric, huh? You might have had a shot if I hadn't been so eager to tear his clothes off."

Instead of pissing her off more, she laughed sardonically. "I couldn't give a damn that you fucked him. Hell I'd have let you fuck anyone you wanted." She reached down and grabbed my hair again. Jesus, I hated women who were hair-pullers. She smiled with no warmth. "But he's bonded to you when he knew you were spoken for. That makes him a very bad boy."

I smiled right back. "Why? Cuz you had dibs? Please."

She shook me by the scruff like a dog, my lack of fear irritating her.

I pushed her further. "Beautiful place," I looked around admiringly. "Fleeing authority clearly hasn't cramped your style. Are you squatting? Or did you just eat the owner?"

She tossed me to the ground again. I spat at her feet in disgust. "You're no queen. You're a joke in a plastic tiara."

"Shut up, human."

"Or what?" I goaded. "You'll kill me? Drink all my tinkerbell blood and dance a jig in the sunlight? Be my guest. Edgington did. You should have seen him. Looked like a charcoal pit after just five minutes."

"Liar!" she roared at me. "You _are_ a fairy! You _can_ bestow daywalking! I've read it! I've _heard_ it!"

The desperation in her voice made me warm with malice. I chortled at its shrieky edge. "Oh, well then it _must_ be true. I _am_ a fairy. I shrink to the size of a thimble and ride a dragonfly. And my blood is SPF 3000. You just go right ahead and take a sip, then go meet the sun. Take a parasol."

She slapped me. It hurt. My head snapped to one side. I snapped it right back and glared at her. "He's coming," I hissed at her triumphantly. "He's coming and when he gets here, you're gonna be in so much trouble."

"I'll kill him."

"You'll try," I goaded. "But he's bigger, and stronger, and so very much older." My words dripped like honey as I described my beautiful defender. "And most of all, he is _really_ pissed off."

I sat up. It took a lot, but I managed. I was finally able to take in my surroundings. The two dark haired men stood to the side, watching us intently. I knew now that they were some of her weres. I looked around the art deco furnishings and found two of her dwindling counterfeit court standing submissively on the far side of the room. One of them shocked me. The other infuriated me.

I ignored Bill completely. The were in Eric's basement had said that he'd be with her. His downturned head and furtive gaze at me confirmed every bad thing I'd thought about him since that fateful night when Eric had revealed Bill's true motives. I had nothing to say to him. The other person had my eyebrows in my hairline.

"Hadley? What the hell are you doin' here?"

My cousin looked guiltily across the expanse of glaring white and bit her lips anxiously. "Sookie," she breathed. "Sookie, I'm so sorry. I tried to tell you, I -,"

"Silence, Hadley." The queen's voice took a softer tone as she addressed my kin. She turned to look at her. "You needn't explain yourself."

Hadley bit her lips again and looked away.

Bill couldn't take his eyes off me. Their beaten, pleading expression made my lip curl. I looked back up at the queen, wanting to look anywhere else than at him, but he called to me. "Sookie." His drawl implored me. I used to love his antebellum accent. Now it just got under my skin. I ignored him. "Sookie," he repeated louder. "Please, I -,"

"Are we done here?" I asked Sophie Anne. "I understand why you took me, but like you say, I'm already bonded to another. Can we just call it even? I want to go home now."

I knew it was a fool's request. Still, it seemed fair to ask, plus I wanted a reason to make Bill stop talking.

She snorted and snapped her fingers at Bill. "Take her. Get her out of my sight. I need to think."

I immediately started to struggle against the jacket. "Hell, no!" I leveled my hatred right at him as he took a hesitant step in my direction. "You stay the fuck away from me."

"Sookie, please. Just let me -."

_No._ _No no no no no no!_

I closed my eyes and shrieked. "ERRRIC!"

His name filled the cavernous room and bounced off the marble and ceramic surfaces. Bill froze. His expression hardened. I didn't give a shit. I screamed it again, glorying in the sound. Bill and Sophie Anne and the Authority could all go to hell. I was saying the only name in the world that mattered to me anymore. I hated Bill's weakness. I hated Hadley's involvement, whatever it was. Right now I needed someone on_ my_ side. Someone with balls. His eyes glowed in my mind, blue and furious and glinting with power. Fearless, Claudine had called him. I called to him now. It thundered around us until Sophie Anne bent and slapped me again. I stopped screaming, but the echo continued for a few seconds more.

She turned to Bill expectantly. "I said remove her. Take her to the guestroom."

I stared daggers at him as he approached. He skulked forward, obeying, but at the same time, unhappy about it.

_He is indecisive._

I snorted at Claudine's incisiveness. I had thought she was being nitpicky at the time. Now I realized she was absolutely right. It was one of his most crippling faults. Either be a two-faced bastard or don't. But for God' sake, stop half-assing.

He reached down and pulled me to my feet with too much kindness. I turned my gaze back to the sad little queen. "Pathetic," I denounced her.

She dropped her fangs and darted into my face, hissing. "Insult me again and I'll skin you into a purse."

"Christ, even your threats are tacky."

She shoved me into Bill's arms. "Take her now."

The good little errand boy, he did as he was told, leading me with a gentleman's softness out of the room. "You're foolish to anger her," he muttered.

"Fuck you," I answered at normal volume. I wouldn't have him whispering to me like we were in cahoots together. I had absolutely nothing to say to him.

He grunted in annoyance and led me down a lavish hallway and through several large rooms. This house had all the budgetary allowance of Eric's home, but none of his elegance. It was just like the queen. Tacky. Over the top and dripping with proof that money couldn't buy taste. Giant oil paintings of cherubs, enormous vases ornately carved, red satin wallpaper, fleur-de-lis all over the place, gilded everything, plush white carpet that dirtied under even the cleanest shoes, heavy mahogany furniture that suffocated even the most spacious rooms. Was that a Fabergé eg g collection on the mantle? Christ. This place reminded me of what Lafayette might build if he won the lottery. Except Lafayette would be the first to admit that his taste was ghetto fab. Sophie Anne, I doubted, had any such sense of humor. It was clear from her mannerisms that she thought she was high class.

Bill escorted me into one such room and followed me in, closing the door swiftly behind him. I shuffled angrily, my arms bound tight against my sides.

"Get out," I growled. "Lock me in or whatever, just get out."

He turned to me, his hands out in supplication. "You need to listen to me."

"I really, really don't."

Hands still out, he sidestepped me and walked across the room to a huge desk, adorned with faux intellect paraphernalia: quill pens, ink wells, a strategically aged atlas, and one of those vintage green desk lamps. Double Christ. He picked up an ancient book from its ledge and turned back to me, holding it out.

"This. This is why you're here."

Brows raised, I said nothing.

He went to the bed and sat down, opening the book gingerly, wincing as the plain, brown binding cracked in protest. "Please, Sookie. Be as angry as you want with me, but you need to read this. You need to understand what she suspects."

"I know what she suspects," I replied. "Why haven't you explained to her that my blood won't protect her?"

He eyed me impatiently. "Because this book is the _Tome of Fae_. I took it from her room to show you. It clarifies what is actually needed from a fairy for a vampire to walk in the sun."

I froze. My heart froze as well. "What?"

He looked down, located a passage and pointed to it. "This. This book started everything. It's the whole reason the queen wants you. In it, much of the Fae world is explained. More specifically, why she thinks she can day walk."

"What does it say about it?"

He looked up. "That more than blood is needed."

That was enough to make me forget my anger. I took a step towards the book, looking at it with fearful eyes. It looked battered and forgotten, this old book. The opened page was heavily stained, the edges torn and moth-eaten. "More of what, Bill? _What does it say_?"

Gratified to have my attention, he relaxed and continued. "It's hard to say. The tome is ancient. Its English is dated and ambiguous. But it's clear about one thing; consent plays a major part in the process."

I clenched my teeth, refusing to utter a single peep. Bill looked at me expectantly. I looked past his gaze and moved opposite him, looking down at the weathered pages. Its script was handwritten, its loopy, artistic lines reminding me a bit of Eric's antique penmanship. A ghost of a smile hinted on my lips. Bill's expression became hopeful and I immediately buried it. My smile was not for him.

I sat down as far away from him as possible while still about to make out the words between us. I sat down awkwardly, holding myself upright without the benefit of my arms. I leaned down gingerly and stared. A tome of my people. After all these years of my unexplained abilities, it was like finding a manual for my own life. I wondered if it covered telepathy. And my energy ball thingies. My bond to Eric. My hybrid status. Everything else I'd yet to discover, and they'd chosen not to explain to me in Faery during my stay.

"Where did she get this?"

He shook his head. "I do not know. But she's poured over it for hours, memorizing it. After Hadley innocently described you to her, she obtained this book and became an expert. She suspected what you might be and wanted to learn all there was to know about the Fae."

The page he had turned to seemed to be referring to the mating bond. It didn't mention day walking, per se, but it hinted that bonding to a Fae would equip the recipient with varying gifts, depending on their mortal or supernatural makeup. I squinted and lowered my head, quickly losing myself. Bill was right. The language was difficult to decipher, and the meaning was bogged down in innuendo and prose.

I didn't notice when Bill leaned closer, inhaling the scent of my hair. He shuddered violently. "You smell of him," he growled in disgust.

I didn't even look up. "I should," I mumbled distractedly. "I fed him earlier."

He snorted in disgust. "You smell of more than blood."

I snorted right back. "I fucked him earlier, too."

"Oh, Sookie. How could you?"

At his revulsion, I finally spared him a glance. "Seriously? You wanna have this conversation?"

His eyes creased heavily with pain. "I can't believe you'd let him defile you this way. For God's sake, Sookie. It's Eric! The vampire you despised above all others!"

"You're right. I was stupid about a lot of things, wasn't I?"

"Whatever you might think of me, you didn't have to demean yourself by accepting his bond. Now you're his whore, Sookie. Forever!"

"Damn right, I am. I'm also his goddess. I'm his whole fucking religion. You treated me like a lady, Bill, and that was sweet of you, but only Eric can make me feel like a deity and a spectacular fuck at the same time."

I knew I was being cruel. I didn't care.

Bill made his bed and he could damn well sleep in it. The fact that he misunderstood my love for Eric only incited me further. As usual, he was underestimating me. To him, I'd always be an innocent little girl, incapable of holding my own in this big, bad world. My heart sang around my bond with Eric. He _never_ underestimated me. He lauded my gifts and my courage. He encouraged my defiance, unlike Bill who constantly shushed me like a child. Eric used his body to shield me from harm many times, but never once did he shield me from knowledge. He understood that to educate me was to arm me. I was not his dependent. I was his equal.

I looked squarely at Bill's ashen expression. "I love him."

"He only wants your blood!"

"He wants a lot more than that."

"I love you, Sookie. I never wanted to lose you like this."

"Oh, don't gimme that shit. If you wanted me so bad, you would have blood bonded to me, not given me an engagement ring. You wanted me, but you feared the queen more. You gave her the opportunity to take me from you. With your bond, I would have been safe from her. The king, too. But you were too chickenshit, weren't you? You were terrified of what would happen if you defied them like that. So you offer me a ring that means nothing in your world and just hoped for the best."

"Sookie, please. You don't understand. A blood bond is-,"

"What, Bill? A blood bond is what?"

"Complicated."

"Of for fuck's sa-," I cut myself off and stood up. "Get out. Leave the book and just get _out_."

"Sookie, please." He rose from the bed, reaching for me.

"No!" I screamed at him, pushing away as best I could. "I'm sicka hearing my name! I'm sicka your pleases and sorries! I'm sicka your voice, Bill! Just go!"

Anger rose slightly in features, but not enough to erase his hesitation. His head dropped and he looked sheepishly at the door. "I will figure out a way to rescue you from this place."

I chuckled and swooped towards the book again, already finished with this discussion. "Don't bother. Eric is coming."

I heard his teeth click down in anger at my words. I didn't look up.

"This house is in Hadley's name," he growled. "He will not breach it unless she invites him in. He will be taken prisoner when he tries."

This information irritated me, but I shrugged as if it didn't matter. "Tell Hadley she needs to redecorate. This place tries too hard."

I heard him grunt and turn towards the door. When he opened it, he stopped and asked, "Is he good to you, Sookie?"

I looked up to find him staring at me with miserable longing. My featured softened. I nodded. "Yes, Bill. He's good to me. You may not believe it, but he loves me. Our bond fills me with it."

Pain cracked wide in his blue eyes and a single drop of blood pooled in one corner. Maybe it really was a shame he never bonded to me. Without it, I would never know if Bill's affection for me was genuine. He seemed to regret it now. He nodded back, stepped out, and shut the door behind him.

I slid to the floor on my knees. I was easier on my back, instead of hovering over the book sideways. Looking at its vulnerable state in front of me, part of me screamed to destroy it. Just tear it apart with my teeth until it was shreds on the carpet. Then no one would ever have the ability to learn my secrets ever again. My mouth itched to open and do just that. But looking at the bond passage, I found it was impossible. For one thing, it was too late to save me from the queen. She'd already memorized it, according to Bill. But more than that, this book was a piece of my history. To destroy it without even reading it was stupidly impulsive. Lord knows what it could teach me. I needed it. Like Eric, the book could educate and thus arm me against future attacks. I'd already learned that ignorance was a fatal indulgence.

I reread the passages that Bill had pointed out. It spoke vaguely of our Bond. I bit my lip.

_To Bonde of Fae is eternal. _  
_The transfer of Power, _  
_The exchange of Wills._  
_Give thyself to Fae and gain._

There were more mentions, but they didn't go into any useful detail. This particular text is probably what got the queen all riled up. As I reread it for the third and fourth time, I realized with immense relief that the queen was misinterpreting it.

Yes, she could gain the gift of day walking from me and yes, she needed my consent - my will - for that to happen, but she was enraged about the wrong bond. It was Eric's bite that she'd brandished to the weres, and Eric's scent that she mourned over. She clearly didn't understand that the book was referring to a Fae bond, not a vampiric one. She probably had no idea such a thing even existed. And rightly so. I knew the Fae were pathologically secretive, and Claudine had made it clear that my bond to a vampire was the first of its kind. The transfer of Power was my Light, not Eric's blood.

I sighed shakily. It wasn't much, but it was something. It didn't change my situation, but any errors she made would surely help us later on. If she spent all her time wailing over my vampire possessor, she'd completely overlook my empowering Fae claim on Eric. And if she couldn't figure out how to wield me, that was an opportunity for me to escape. Or be rescued. The point was, she needed my will, so she'd have to be nice until she figured out a new plan of action.

I nosed the page, turning it carefully to the next. It fluttered and settled.

_The Scion_, it read.

My brows scrunched as I read.

_Of Bonde unique cometh the Scion. Prophesied of Fae, Augury of the invisible world._  
_The Omen of Amalgamation, the twist, the deed of Equalibrium_  
_Of beating hearts twain, come one. From the once, come thrice. _

Hmmm. I nosed under the second page and turned it as well. I wasn't sure what it was talking about, but luckily it didn't sound particularly relevant. Beating hearts twain certainly didn't describe me and Eric, since his heart didn't beat at all. I needed to use the time I had and learn only what would help me against whatever the queen was cooking up. The next page seemed to be describing my Light.

I hunkered down and started arming myself.


	17. Chapter 17

**A/N:** Eric's POV. Stand back, folks.

I excused myself from my guests did a quick sweep of my bar. I caught their scent long before I reached the ladies' room. I cursed, startling two human women waiting in line. Upon seeing me, their pupils dilated and their scent turned sexual. Ignoring them, I spun on my heel, closing my eyes and inhaling deeply.

Two of them. Wolves. The slightly saccharine fog of chloroform. And of course, Sookie. All of these scents had spiked just minutes ago, now all traces of their origins were gone.

I opened my eyes.

Weres had taken my beloved. They had waltzed right into a vampire bar and stolen my bonded right in front of me.

I attacked my bond with Sookie, forcing my will into her, trying to make her wake up and give me a clearer picture of her welfare. I sensed nothing but black. I pushed harder, furious at what they might to do her while unconscious, but it was useless. My angel was sleeping.

I felt the throb of movement within her, which told me they were on the highway heading north.

I looked back at my VIP booth and growled so viciously that all within ten feet of me edged away in fear. As they should. They'd been closer to Sookie during her abduction and could have raised the alarm. Instead, they'd stood around like vacant sheep, baaing and mewling and trawling for a rough fuck. If only one of them had called out in protest, I would have decapitated those wolves in a flash, saving Sookie and silencing their mission for the queen.

And it _was_ the queen. I could think of no one else who would be stupid or arrogant enough to pull such a stunt as this. The Authority would have used vampires. Weres were too low rent for their tastes.

As Sookie moved further from my side, our bond yanked at my flight instincts. My blood was suddenly magnetized, throbbing with the pull to go north. Having never bonded with someone before, the sensation was new to me. Thick, furious possession raged in my veins so intensely that I couldn't tell if it was Viking, vampire, or Fae in origin. I'd never responded well to loss as a human. Vampires were aggressively territorial. But most of all, Sookie's Light pulsed like a beacon inside me, filling me with a distressing level of panic. I felt dangerously unstable. Sookie needed me. If I flew now, I could catch them inside of ten minutes.

My guests were watching me.

I swallowed my fear and smiled lazily at them.

Fuck fuck fuck _fuck_!

I could not leave.

To leave was to expose our situation. To leave was to jeopardize Sookie's secret. The Authority might want her for interrogation, but once her true nature was revealed, their interest would turn as covetous as the queen's. They would take her from me. They'd lock her away in a steel bastion and take vial after vial of her blood, desperate to extract its essence, just as they had done with ordinary humans when synthesizing Tru Blood. During which time, they'd question her ceaselessly about the Fae. They'd want every last detail about our ancient enemies and how best to arm ourselves against any attack they might plan in the future. In my mind's eye, she lay quietly in a white room, broken after months of fighting to escape. Too much of her blood had been taken. Too much of her soul. She'd wither under such sterile, heartless conditions. She needed sunlight. She needed my arms. My mouth. My eyes and my voice. She needed her Light, which now resided in my body alongside my darkness. She needed my love. If I let myself cave to panic now, I would condemn her to such a fate.

I turned discreetly to the side and sent out a recall pulse to Pam. She must return immediately. She was an excellent strategist and I needed help. Plus, if the weres were taking Sookie to Sophie Anne - and I knew they were - I no longer needed Pam to locate that bitch. Sookie's presence would lead me right to her.

I composed my features and moved towards my table once again.

I sat and made excuses about Sookie's sudden departure. She was needed at home, I explained. Her brother had foolishly taken up with were panther trash and needed some sisterly advice. Their squat in Hotshot was known to my guests. They nodded sagely in agreement with my unspoken insinuation that _all_ weres were trash, regardless of social status. We spoke casually about politics and what would happen now that our monarchy was vacant once again. Several candidates were suggested. They asked about the strange business with the maenad in Bon Temps, of all places. I answered their questions and mused about realpolitik solutions for our current troubles.

At some point, I heard my name resonate in Sookie's frightened, pleading tone before falling silent again. The only sign of anguish I showed was a tick in my jaw as I ordered Domingo another bottle.

E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S

After an hour, I felt Pam reenter the premises. Shortly after that, our good Authority representatives took their leave.

"Get in here," I mumbled to her, crossing the bar into my office.

She emerged from the back area where she'd been waiting and followed silently. I closed the door and began to pace. My desk stopped me after ten steps. I upended it, sending it crashing across the room. My sofa sat just beside it, mocking me with the knowledge that Sookie had fed me there just two hours before. I could still smell her shampoo in the cushions. I could hear her chiding me about wanting sex, laughing in that soft, rippling voice that told me she liked my wolfish appetite despite her admonishment. I lunged at it, ripping out stuffing and smashing its wooden frame to splinters.

Pam stood to one side, her anxiety palpable. The bond between us was a frayed wire of distress.

"Where is she?" she asked as I murdered my furniture.

I collapsed to my knees, grunting. "Sophie Anne has taken her."

Pam hissed quietly, fangs bared. "Why are we still here?"

"I had to persuade the Authority that nothing was amiss. Weres took her. I had to stay here and make sure they didn't doubt our story."

"Fine. Then why are we still here _now_?"

I closed my eyes. My bond with Sookie was much murkier than usual. The drugs in her system had weakened her. I tapped her for proximity. She had stopped moving and was now about a hundred miles upstate. I sensed discomfort in her body and fogged displeasure in her mind. But no pain. She was not in immediate danger, or so she believed.

"She is awakening. Slowly. No doubt Sophie Anne will question her first before she tries anything."

Pam snarled in disgust. "Surely you don't think that bitch would taste her once she recognizes your bond. Our laws would see her silvered for - "

"That is exactly what I think, Pam. She has already broken our laws. Drinking from a bonded human is like a parking ticket at this point."

I felt my child's fury at such an infraction. "So let's say she does. Fine. We'll kill her twice when we find her. The point is that your bond with Sookie is unbreakable. The queen will have enjoyed a fine last meal and Sookie will return to your side. Fade out."

I rose up. As much as the idea of the queen drinking Sookie enraged me, I forced myself to see reason. Pam was right. Three other vampires had sipped from my beloved besides myself. Lorena and Edgington had paid dearly for it and Compton had reaped what he'd sown. Sookie had lived through it all. When I found her, I would offer her Sophie Anne's heart in recompense for my failings. I would heal her with gallons of my own blood, and we would forget all of this and go back to discovering all of the wonders of our union. I would never leave her side again. I would guard her every step, even if she was simply going to the damn grocery store. Nothing would distract me, not even the sun she had given me. I would stay vigilant.

This I promised her.

"You will drive north," I said aloud. "I'll text the coordinates once I find her. Once there, we will begin our siege."

E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S

It was still very early in the morning when I took to the sky. Pam followed in my Lotus, making slower time, but moving faster than she would running. Sadly, my child had not been gifted with the ability to fly. Like all other forms of endowment, flight struck at random in vampires. Some could, most couldn't. The gift often manifested in later years, but so far, Pam had remained flightless. No matter. It wasn't required.

I flew quickly, making better time than usual. But it wasn't the threat of the eventual sunrise that had me rocketing through the darkness, as was usually the case. It was Sookie. Our bond was an unbearable throb of forced separation. I felt hewn in half by a blunt instrument, ragged pieces of me flapping where Sookie used to be. She was awake now, reaching out to me. I felt nimble plucks at my mind, her virtual fingers searching, entwining, tugging. Her outer emotions were furious. She was fighting against whatever the queen was forcing upon her. Her inner emotions were soft and imploring as she earnestly sought me out. I heard the ghost of my name. I felt the impression of her hands caressing my face, as if she was identifying me purely through touch. My memory betrayed me and summoned the soft sleekness of her body wrapped around me, her athletic limbs refusing to loosen from my waist and shoulders as I flew. The bitter chill that blasted around me did nothing to dull the warmth she had bestowed in my blood.

I pressed back into her. _I'm coming_, I projected. _Stay strong, lover. I'll find you._

At my reckless speed, it took less than half an hour. I saw the unfamiliar mansion from two miles out and knew instantly it was Sophie Anne's new lair. Jesus, the woman really was incapable of subtle, even when fleeing the law. I was downwind and could pick up several pieces of helpful information. A small pack of weres was located in the barn. There were five vampires present, one of whom was Compton. Another was the queen. I assumed the other three were guards. Surprisingly, a weaker bond pulsed in my mind, informing me that Hadley was also in attendance. It had been months since I had fed her my blood, but the tie was still strong enough to project her emotions. At present, she was hopelessly sad. A fallen queen's court was not a happy place to begin with, but her sorrow eclipsed even that. She was being eaten alive by guilt.

I landed in a tree by the barn and listened intently. Four pairs of lungs took long, steady breaths. There were no voices. The weres were sleeping. I had anticipated this. Weres were needed for daytime defense. Vampires could handle themselves at this hour.

I flew up to the house. On closer inspection, I swore under my breath.

The house was awash in a pale glow that only vampires could see. A glow that meant the house was protected under human ownership, its soft light acting as an impenetrable barrier to my kind.

_Fuck!_

I landed on the lawn, staring up at it in fury. Since when had the queen become less of an imbecile?

I quickly sorted through my options and arrived at the most obvious conclusion. Hadley owned this house. There were no others present and the queen would most certainly use her pet in such a fashion. I whipped out my phone and texted Pam. She would be here within an hour, provided that she didn't get pulled over. It would only take minutes to glamour a cop, but they were minutes I was loathe to part with. I preferred to have fellow warriors at my side when I engaged a stronghold.

For now, I was forced to work alone.

I ran back to the barn. Inside, I could still hear the soft noises of four creatures resting. Scanning the structure, I chose the far entrance. For this to work, I would have to be fast.

As I slowly swung the splintered old door open, I calculated my timing. I must kill three of them outright. Then somehow, I must spare the fourth without damaging them and without letting them raise the alarm before I could glamour them. Once that was done, I would instruct the were to enter the home and bring me Sookie. This was my preference, however Sookie might prove unattainable. A were was no match for a vampire guard, let alone five. And Sophie Anne would anticipate my arrival. So unless the queen proved unparalleled in her stupidity, stealing Sookie would not be an option. Should this be the case, I would also instruct the glamoured were to abduct Hadley instead and bring her to me. I would glamour her for an invitation, then retrieve Sookie myself. And should the were be caught during its mission, he would carry out my final command and attack the queen.

Even with all of the optimism in the world, my chances of success were slim. Still, I had little choice. Every second I wasted was a moment when my bond to Sookie might explode with pain and degradation. The queen was weighing her options, but she wasn't a patient woman. She would make a rash decision and do something stupid that jeopardized my lover's safety. I had to act.

Sliding noiselessly into the barn, I hovered an inch off the crunching surface of the dirt floor, scanning the room for sign of my prey. In the corner stood four cots. On them lay four prone figures. I selected three. They would not wake, not ever again. I shot forward, all of my speed and ferocity bared for the kill.

Something shot out from my left. It landed lightly against me. I roared in pain as a silver net draped softly but devastatingly over my flying body. It seared into my face and arms, its diamond pattern slicing deep into my skin and burning with unspeakable pain. My strength disappeared. I crashed to the ground, writhing and snarling under its light, but crushing weight.

The four weres jumped a mile in the air at the sound before raising from their beds and making their unhurried way to me. They all stared down at me as I lay helpless, their faces full of smug victory. I had failed.

"Fuckers," I hissed at them acidly.

One of the older men turned to his pack and smiled lightly. "See? Motion-sensor nets, man. It's the wave of the future." _  
_


	18. Chapter 18

**A/N**: Sookie's POV.

I read for hours. Or rather, I tried to read for hours.

The book was a giant pain in the ass. The language was so antiquated that it almost slipped out of English and into Gibberish. Cometh this and thouest that, metaphors and bizarre parables all over the place. Christ, couldn't the author have been a little more straightforward? How was anyone supposed to decipher this mess?

I closed my strained eyes to rest them. For the millionth time that day, I longed for Eric. Even if all this nonsense with Sophie Anne wasn't going on, he could at least sit with me and help me unscramble it. He'd been around when people were actually speaking this noise. I made a promise to myself that when all of this was over and everyone involved was dead or in jail (except Hadley), I would take this book back to his home. We would study it properly, just him and me, and when we'd wrung it dry of all useful information about my fairy heritage, we'd shelve it in his fancy-ass library with the rest of his rare collections. I couldn't think of a better place for it to reside.

Sighing, I opened my eyes again and reread the passage on Light.

It was confusing as hell. In one sentence, it was referred to simply as Light. In others, it changed to Sunn or Radia. It was clear that all Faes had this Light (or Sunn). It was also clear that we carried it around all the time, not just as a weapon, but as a state of being. Strangely, while it mentioned Radia occasionally, that word seemed to mean something slightly different. From what I could gather, Faes had Radia, but couldn't use it like they could Light. It was a specialized kind of Light that operated through an intermediary. It didn't elaborate on who or what this intermediary was, exactly, but whatever it was, it couldn't do so without the Fae's Consent. Damn, this was confusing.

No matter what section of the book I read, Consent made a constant appearance. Our enemies could kill Fae, eat Fae, torture Fae, enslave Fae, no problem, but if anyone wanted us for our abilities and not just our blood and deaths, then they needed our permission.

I could only imagine how irritating the queen must have found this information. Eric once mentioned that the queen had literally floored him when he'd upset her, threatening him despite his superior abilities. Since she didn't have my Consent and never would, I imagined I was going to meet the same rough handling, eventually. Apparently she'd never heard about catching more flies with honey, preferring instead to chase them around the room with a meat cleaver.

I widened my knees and stretched myself backwards. My back hurt. My arms ached savagely. I tried rotating them in the confining sleeves, desperate for a bit more blood flow. A small rush moved through them, giving me a tiny but welcome relief. Damn, I was tired. I thought of the blood I'd given to Eric and the toll that constant fear took on people. I was probably due for a serious nap.

I took a deep breath and poured my attention back into the book. I could sleep when I'd worked out an escape route or when Eric rescued me. In fact, the second option sounded fantastic. Eric was perfectly welcome to swoop in and save me just as the sun broke, then he and I could fly somewhere far away from this stupid place and out of the were range, then curl up and sleep on the grass, just as we'd done earlier that day.

I caught myself. God, had it really only been earlier that day? My outdoor session with Eric and Claudine's visit felt like years ago.

I remembered the feel of Eric's head in my lap as we snuggled in a heap, just like a couple of lazybone dogs. I couldn't think of a better way to fall asleep right now.

But no. Escape first. Sleep later. Time to study.

I blinked hard, making my eyes wake up. I leaned over the bed's edge again, ready to delve back into more confusing prose, when my door burst open. I jumped at the sound.

"Find anything useful?" The queen smiled as she stood in the doorway. Her eyes flickered to her precious book laid out before me and narrowed. I opened my mouth to answer, but she just snapped her fingers to another vampire standing behind her.

"Bring her to the parlor."

The hulking guard nodded and zipped into my room, scooping me up before I could so much as sputter in surprise. Upended like a potato sack over his shoulder, the two walked out and made their way downstairs, the book left wide open and ignored on the bed. I could only see behind us from my perch over his back as we moved through the house.

As we entered another room, I saw nothing but hallway, so when my bond to Eric flared spectacularly, I knew before the guard tossed me on the floor that he was in the room with me.

"Eric!" I leapt to my feet and looked frantically around. Another heavily-appointed room greeted me, complete with a fire place and several beautiful, uncomfortable looking fainting sofas. Four other vampires were already there, turned expectantly towards us. Two were guards, one restraining Bill with an ease that told me the guard was much older than my ex. The other was wearing leather gloves, lightly holding the end of a thick silver chain. The chain bore into a leash, which looped seven or eight times around the chest and bare arms of my beautiful, furious vampire. He was on his knees, grunting in suppressed pain and baring his fangs to the queen at my side.

Eric.

I didn't think.

I lunged across the room. I didn't even wonder if anyone would try and stop me, but thankfully nobody did. I skidded to my knees, almost toppling into him. His t-shirt protected his chest, but I could hear the silver cooking into the skin of his biceps. His glare transferred and instantly softened as his attention switched from the queen to me. I didn't let him talk. Without my arms, I simply fell forward into him, capturing his fanged mouth in my soft human kiss.

Growling in loud relief, he returned it. I shoved my tongue between his teeth, heedless of everyone else in the room. I slashed it against his fangs, using my blood to communicate my joy. His growl deepened and he reciprocated, cutting his own tongue and laving it firmly in my mouth. Our mixed blood crossed over and we groaned in pleasure as our bond ignited, sealing us together by nearly blasting us apart with its intensity.

The queen may have chuckled and Bill may have groaned in disappointment. I don't know.

The room went black. There was no one there but us.

I shoved against my straight jacket and cursed loudly. Thanks to it and his chains, we couldn't hold each other.

He pulled his mouth away from mine and looked down at me, fuming. "Have they violated you?"

I couldn't tell if he meant rape or drinking my blood. I shook my head violently. "No. I'm okay."

He dropped back on his heels and hunched low, his head connecting to my belly, dragging the side of his face over the crisscross of my trapped arms and up to my throat, sniffing out the truth of my words. I tilted into his search and murmured reassurances. Our bond was filled with his rage at the mere possibility that someone had tasted or taken me. When his lips neared mine, I whispered, "Are you hurt?"

He gave me a tight smile through his obvious pain and shook his head. "Forgive me, lover. I have failed you."

"Shut up," I muttered, pressing my lips into his throat and moving lower. I kissed the thick chains over his chest, as if my sweetness would convince them to stop burning my poor vampire.

I rubbed myself along his front, desperate for contact. Even with everything that had happened between us, I still wanted to reassure him that nothing - _nothing_ - would ever break my connection with him. I murmured softly, "I do not consent to her. I'm yours."

He looked at me inscrutably, weighing my words. It was impossible for him to know about the tome or the significance of what I'd said, but that didn't stop him from agreeing one hundred percent. "I do not consent to this. You are mine," he whispered back. I smiled wanly. Of course I was.

Suddenly I was yanked to my feet. Eric tried to follow, only to be tugged back by the guard holding his chain. He hissed in frustration as the chain bit deeper.

Sophie Anne was all business, pulling me back towards the other side of the room. Bill struggled angrily in my direction, but his captor merely squeezed him harder in response. I heard one of his arm bones crack under the pressure. Bill hissed as well, enraged at the pain. His restraint worried me. Whatever this bitch had planned, Bill clearly wasn't on board with it. That was bad for me. Very bad.

The tome's words were seared in my mind. I still didn't understand them, or if it was possible to use them in any way to protect us. I only had some half-baked theories and a lot of presumptions. Still. They were _all_ I had. Staring unflinchingly at Eric, my lips wouldn't stop moving, their words becoming a chant. "I do not consent to her I'm yours I do not consent to her I'm yours," over and over.

Consent. That seemed to be the word of the day. I threw it out like a verbal shield. I was a Fae, goddammit. And I wasn't okay with this woman trying to usurp my powers. I did _not_ fucking Consent.

The queen must have grown bored with my words. With my back against her front, she clapped her hand over my mouth.

Eric hissed his bloody mouth at her again, the evidence of our reinforced bond covering his lips and teeth. "Just what the fuck do you plan to do now, Majesty?" His sarcasm dripped down the last word. "You've kidnapped a bonded human. _My_ bonded human. Do you imagine you can override my possession of her?"

She snorted behind me and tugged my head to one side, exposing my throat to her waiting fangs.

Both Eric and Bill fought savagely at her move.

"No!" Bill gritted.

"Drink her and I'll fucking destroy you," Eric swore.

I was so scared that I almost didn't hear the queen chuckle at them. "Drink her, Northman? You really think I'm interested in her blood?" She spat the word like my blood was the cheapest brand of hooch. I exhaled sharply at her insidious tone. If not my blood, then what?

I felt her finger dance down the column of my throat, provoking Eric with her intimate touch on skin that belonged to him. "It's daylight I crave, you asshole. I don't give a fuck if she tastes like cherry pie. I'm sick of darkness. I'm sick of simulated UV lightbulbs. I'm sick of smelling the sun in my humans' hair. I was a creature of light before I was turned. Now I'm taking back what's mine, one way or another."

_I do not Consent. I do not Consent. I do not Consent. I do not Consent. _I pushed my silent statement into the universe.

"Impossible," Eric said. "It's not hers to give. It's not yours to take. Let her go, Sophie Anne. Her blood will not inoculate you and her bond is mine."

"Yes," she crooned at him. "You've thrown a wrench in the plan, that's for sure. I have little choice now."

Two of her fingers walked flirtingly along my throat now. I couldn't see it, but I felt the cruel twist of her smile. "If I can't bond with her, then I'll just have to turn her."

I went rigid in her arms and thrashed frantically. "No!" I screamed behind her hand. "Noooo!"

Eric exploded to his feet, a miracle of strength under the debilitating weight of silver, and tried to charge us. His chain ripped him back, but he fought it like a rabid bear. "NO!" His deafening roar filled the tiny room. "Fucking bitch, I'll kill you! She cannot be turned! _SHE IS MINE_!"

"Oh, but I can," she argued lightly, watching him struggle. "Her bond may be spoken for, but as her maker, she will answer only to me. As a fairy, she will have the power, and as my child, she will grant me what I wish. My command will leave her no choice."

I bit hard into her fingers across my mouth. She grunted in pain, but didn't move them. My arms were about ready to dislocate in their frenzy to escape the jacket. She was insane, this woman. Turning me? What the hell would that achieve?

Bill spoke up as he wrestled his own match. "And what then, Majesty? What happens when she loses her own ability to day walk? How is she supposed to reinstate yours? Who's to say she won't lose everything, including her telepathy and her Light? Would you foster so mundane a child?"

I wasn't happy about the source, but I was glad someone had the brains to think quickly. Bill made a very good point.

But the queen just shrugged. "Then I will have lost nothing. If Sookie's powers do not transfer as a vampire, I will end her."

Bill roared in fury, but the sound was nothing compared to Eric's thunderous howl. His eyes were nothing but coals as he staggered wholeheartedly against his tether. "You would kill your own child? For no reason? You would not simply release her?"

"You needn't worry, Sheriff. You'll be staked long before she rises. She will never be yours, regardless of whether she stays gifted." She paused, twirling a piece of my hair. "If she doesn't, then she can join you in the true death."

I moaned pitifully, the sound smothered. Fear spiked hard in my mind and body, but it was overshadowed by Eric's suffering. The man was a mess of despair and physical pain.

She lowered her lips to my jugular. My human resistance meant nothing to her steely strength. She held me with ease. Tears leaked freely from the corners of my eyes as I watched Eric fight valiantly...and lose.

Suddenly her hand was gone from my mouth. "Say your goodbyes."

The guard kicked Eric's legs out from under him. Shouting in rage, he collapsed to his knees, torment filling his expression. "No," he rasped. "You cannot take her from me. I do not consent."

Fear boiled hotly between us. I was choking on it. But if this was the end, I needed him to understand. I pushed as much of it aside as possible and filled the empty space with my love. All of it. Eric gasped raggedly as I let myself go into his head.

"I love you," I said. "Remember that."

Once again, nothing else existed. No fancy room, no vampires, no exes and no queens. Just him. I closed my eyes as his love moved across the space and collided with mine.

"I love you," he whispered. "Even turned, you'll still be mine, Sookie."

I nodded and the queen clucked her tongue in reprimand at his silly declaration. "Enjoy the show, gentlemen," she offered Eric and Bill.

With that, her fangs descended. She sealed her mouth to my throat and bit down hard. I slammed my eyes shut and started screaming.

Screaming.

Oh, my God. So much screaming. I hadn't realized my voice could reach such panicked heights. It shattered the air around us, attacking my ear drums. I didn't feel any pain. I was too afraid to let it register. It was only when I stopped screaming to inhale and start again that I realized my scream was not the one ringing out at such ferocious volume.

A void filled the space behind my back. I spun around. The queen wasn't behind me. She was on the floor at my feet, screeching in agony, her hands clapped hard over her mouth as blood gushed alarmingly over her fingers. My blood? God, had she taken that much of it already?

The woman thrashed wildly and spat a mouthful of it. More filled her mouth in a flash. I realized then it wasn't my blood at all. It couldn't be. It was hers. She was bleeding profusely. She moved her hands to spit again and that's when I saw it.

Her fangs.

They were gone.

I staggered back, terrified. What the fuck was going on? My foot came into contact with the now slippery floor and I fell. Without my arms, I landed hard on my side and let out a startled woof of air. Amid the red mess near my face, I could make out the tiniest white splinters.

The queen's teeth. They weren't gone at all. They had shattered.

"Sookie!"

Eric's voice had me rolling to my side instantly.

"Eric, she -,"

I stopped dead when I caught a glimpse of the scene before me.

His guard had dropped his leash and was edging away slowly. Bill and his captor were staring in horror between Eric and the queen. I only had eyes for Eric. I watched in amazement as my vampire writhed on his knees, his face contorting with pain as his skin began to shine with unnaturally bright light.

"Eric!"

"Stay back," he snarled. The light intensified. It filled his face and blasted sharply from his eyes. It radiated from every inch of his arms. It became so brilliant that the weave of his clothes couldn't dampen it and it exploded in a dazzling beam that filled the room just as overwhelmingly as the queen's screams.

The light fell across the five other vampires in the room. More ear-splitting screams joined Sophie Anne's.

Eric roared loudly, still fighting his chains as he became so shiny that I couldn't make out his features. The silver chain detonated, sending lethal shrapnel across the room. I heard more shouts of agony as the metals shards embedded themselves in the others. Not a single piece found me.

"Eric. Baby, what's happeni -,"

His light erupted and suddenly the rest of us were sharing a parlor with a dwarf star. I whimpered and slammed my eyes shut against the white glare. The screaming around me spiked as one by one, I heard their owners liquefy; their squishy, now silent remains pelting the hardwood floor.

I sobbed.

Oh, sweet Jesus in heaven. The noise. The metallic stench of too much blood. The sunburst that was eating my lover from the inside out.

I cried like a child. Everyone was dead. Six vampires were nothing but sludge, oozing around me like some kind of macabre swimming pool. I pulled my knees into my face. I didn't want to see. I already knew by my solitary cries that all of the others were gone.

A small piece of grief was spared for Bill. My first love, he hadn't deserved whatever horrible fate had just met him.

But it was hardly noticed and quickly forgotten. It didn't have a chance under the deluge of grief that now beset me for Eric. I howled as my heart wrenched violently in half.

_Take me! _ I screamed silently at the murderous light around me. _Kill me and let me be with him! I won't live without him! You can't make me, goddammit! You can't make - _

_"_Sookie._" _

My fetal ball was being pried apart by a force much stronger than myself.

"Open your eyes, lover. Look at me."

Moaning, I shut them tighter. "No," I groaned hotly. "Just take me. Let me go to him."

The buckles of my jacket were loosened. My arms were straightened and the sleeves fell away from me. The second my arms were free, they were captured again by two warm, insistent hands. They forced me to grab hold of two achingly familiar shoulders as I was lifted up from the massacre seeping around me.

"Sookie," the dark voice rasped. "Damn you, girl. You _will_ look at me!"

I cracked my eyes open and found two beautiful blue ones staring down at me anxiously. Oh, thank Christ. It was over. I was dead.

"It worked," I mumbled in relief, letting myself relax. "God let me die."

He shook me. "_Look at me!_" he snapped. "You aren't dead, my love. Tell me you are uninjured. _Now!_"

My eyes fluttered at his anger. Strange. I wouldn't have thought Heaven would be this hostile. I rotated my legs over his arms and craned my neck, searching for pain since it was such a big, damn deal to him. I felt nothing but the hours-old ache from the jacket. I sat up a little straighter, pulling his neck so I could adjust.

The softness of his hair at his nape made me smile. I craned to the side and open my eyes clearly. The square set of his jaw was the first thing I noticed. Its muscles were clenched and sawing with worry. The dip in his chin was dusted with heavier stubble than normal.

The idea that Eric still needed to shave brought me out of my stupor completely. Who would ever shave in Heaven if they didn't have to?

"Eric," I said slowly. His earthly name. Not his angelic one.

He relaxed fractionally, his chest deflating as the tension escaped. "Sookie," he responded, dropping his forehead to mine. "Are you injured?"

I shook my head slowly against his. "No," I answered. "I don't think so."

He huffed and resettled me in his arms, enfolding me further into them.

"What happened?" I asked.

He shook his head, pivoting on his heels, surveying the carnage. "I don't know."

I hazarded a peek over the cradle of my body. Red tissue and pulp spattered what was once a genteel suite. One puddle was the queen, destroyed where she lay screeching over her splintered fangs. Another near the door had been my guard. One near where Eric had stood was his guard and the final two, I dreaded to acknowledge, had been Bill and his jailer.

Only Eric had been spared.

I clutched him like a drowning victim and buried my face in his chest. The same chest where my Light resided. The same Light that had risen up in almighty retribution, smiting those who would rend us apart.

I understood now.

I held Eric tightly; my intermediary hugged me back, returning my relief and reassurance. My Radia, unwieldable by me, slept soundly alongside his heart, ready to rise again if our bond was threatened.

I held up a single finger between us.

It looked normal. Frail and easily punctured. But now, only for one. My skin had turned to steel under the queen's unauthorized bite.

I placed my fingertip against one of his fangs and pressed gently.

It pricked as sweetly as a grape. A bead of blood pooled as I settled my finger against his tongue. He closed his lips around it, sucking gently.

I sighed. He moaned softly, his head tipping forward as he luxuriated in the proof our unbreakable connection.

"My husband," I murmured, my eyes slipping closed.

He opened his mouth, his tongue sliding deliciously over my skin. "My darling wife."


	19. Chapter 19

**A/N**: So much love to you guys for ALL of your reviews. Sorry for not answering them all. The Reply button to answer them doesn't work, for some reason. FF really is one busted-ass jalopy of a site. Eric's POV.

I kept her finger in my mouth. I needed it. I needed it like a goddamn baby needed a pacifier.

I lifted her swept-up body higher, closer to my face. Still sucking on the tiny creek of her blood, I buried my head into her stomach and inhaled raggedly. The scent of fear and perfection filled my sinuses. It was the scent of Sookie, alive in her human-fairy form. I released the useless air in my lungs and inhaled again. And again. I was snorting her, as avidly as humans snorted cocaine.

Sookie tried to pull her finger from me, probably to touch me in comfort. I growled reprimandingly. "Mine," I grumbled, sucking harder.

I felt her urgent soothes, her other hand buried deep in my hair. "Eric," she whispered. "It's okay. I'm okay. Honest."

"Silence," I muttered, and continued to gorge on her taste and scent, reveling in the proof that she was alive and undamaged. No one had touched her. Nothing had hurt her. No vampire had taken her blood and no male had forced himself on her. All I could detect were contact scents. Sophie Anne, Compton, two weres and her vampire guard. I could smell their hands on her skin. Just for that, I would have ended them. The fact that all of them were complicit in her near violation and turning, I mourned that their ends had been so quick and merciful.

For attempting to turn my woman, their deaths would have drawn out for weeks at my hand.

Alas, they'd only paid a fraction of what they owed. Pity.

I quickly forgot them and continued to rub my face along the front of her yellow dress. Her head tipped back as I dragged my cheek onto her bare chest. Her silky skin slid under mine and I groaned.

I refused to think about how close I came to losing the warm, angelic feel of her bare body against mine. How close I came to losing everything.

"Forgive me," I repeated to her. "I did not anticipate her move. I should have. I was remiss to leave you alone."

"Hush," she drew the word out in her sweet, lazy drawl. "I'm the one who didn't react in time. I should have been watching. I should have shot them across your bar and into your damn lap. You wouldn't have even had to get up to take care of them if I'd been more careful."

I dug my fingers into her flesh through her clothes. It might have hurt her slightly, but I didn't care. I needed to feel her, right down to the curve of her bones. I closed my eyes and let the massive rupture in my soul slowly knit back together as her presence healed me. In the last thousand years, my heart hadn't beat, except for the half dozen times Sookie had electrified it back to momentary life. It didn't beat now. But it squeezed. The pressure around that dead organ had me gasping as it threatened not to pump, but to collapse.

Such was her power over me.

I lowered her in my arms to look at her. Her head was craned to the side. The slaughter around us made her shiver with disgust and sadness. The angle gave me a perfect view of her unblemished throat where the queen had attacked. I couldn't spare a hand to trace its loveliness, so I nuzzled just below her ear.

"How did you deflect her bite, lover?"

She turned her head into mine, caressing my forehead with her cheek as I continued to nudge her gently, reaffirming again and again that she hadn't been defiled.

Her arms slid from my neck to the back of my head, urging me on. "I don't know," she murmured into my hair. "I just thought about you. How she had no right. That I belonged to myself and to you and she wasn't allowed to touch what wasn't hers."

"Many victims have thought such things at their deaths. It has never saved anyone as it just saved you."

"I know. I wasn't expecting it to save me. It was just the truth. She...she didn't have my permission."

Despite the sobered circumstances, I chuckled dryly against her. "My self-righteous little Fae."

"You didn't consent to it, either."

"Damn fucking right, I didn't."

"Then shut up, mister. I'm not even the most self-righteous person in this hug."

I chuckled deeper and took another deep drag of her skin. I felt a powerful, ridiculous urge to lift her up and wrap her completely around my head, smothering my senses with her. I refrained. Now was not the time to lose myself in her.

Soft footsteps were approaching.

Snarling, I dropped Sookie to her feet and stood between her and the door she had entered. The steps were making their way towards this room. My fangs clicked. My lips pulled back. I hissed loudly, ready to decapitate whatever dared to advance.

"Eric, what- ?"

I tossed my hand behind me. "Ssshh."

Sookie obeyed and quieted, though I sensed her peeking around my arm to see what I was reacting to.

"Keep back," I rasped. "Ready yourself, but stay where you are."

The composition of the air changed as Sookie's Light flowed into her hands. Once again, I felt the heat of anger emanating from her. My bloodlust mixed with my sexual lust as my warrior woman armed herself at my side. Magnificent creature. I gloried in my possession of such a unique and powerful mate as she stood ready to fight.

Standing tall and furious, I prepared to tear my opponent's throat out. Until the opponent spoke.

"Sookie?"

The soft voice of a frightened human filled the dark hallway. The warble of her Southern accent was slivered with fear. As she moved into the light, my fangs stayed out.

"Hadley," Sookie breathed out in relief. She made to walk around me to get to her cousin. I cut her off, snarling deeply at the queen's pet. I'd already seen this girl. Once the weres had transferred me from their net into chains, they'd marched me up to the house and handed me over to the queen. Hadley had been summoned to the door. "Invite him," the queen had clipped. Staring at the floor, that same sad, frightened voice had whispered, "You're welcome in my home, Eric Northman."

The protective glow around the house had disappeared. I was dragged into this ridiculous room to watch that whore drain my beloved and turn her into a child of darkness.

Hadley had conveniently disappeared for that crime against her own kin. Now she stood before me.

Sookie huffed in exasperation. "Eric! It's just-"

"I know who she is," I replied, never taking my eyes off the cowering girl as she shakily edged further into the room. "I said don't move."

Sookie's Light extinguished and the atmosphere lost its magical aura. I regretted it. I enjoyed the way its pulse made me burn for blood and sex. Sookie's Light, be it love or weaponry, made me think of sunshine and destruction and the way her lush hips filled my hands as I took her on soft grass. Its extringuishment saddened me. But it did not diminish my fury.

"Eric, honestly. Hadley's not going to hurt us."

The woman in question had her head bowed to me in total submissive fear. "I'm sorry," she murmured, her hands wringing the front of her short little skirt. "I never wanted any of this."

"Fuck what you want," I hissed at her. "This is what you've chosen."

"Eric!" Sookie pushed past me and wrapped her arms around Hadley. "She's not our enemy."

"She is responsible for your exposure and she did nothing to stop any of this. How is she not?" I allowed Sookie her attentions to her cousin, but didn't retract my fangs. Hadley stood timidly against Sookie, letting my Fae shield her from me.

"I'm sorry," she bleated again. I hated the whine of her tone. "I couldn't have stopped her. She promised she'd never do anything to hurt Sookie. She said she was just curious."

"Stupid girl," I spat. "I should kill you where you stand."

"I said that's enough," Sookie said sternly, holding Hadley away from me. "She couldn't have known." She turned to Hadley and stroked her hair away from her tear-stained face. "It's all right," she crooned sweetly. "It's done. No one's going to hurt anyone."

I was about to argue further when the sound of gunshots ripped into the night. Not in the house, but they were close. Somewhere outside. I reacted without thinking, grabbing Sookie and speeding out onto the front lawn. I recognized the reports as my own weapon. I kept such a gun in my Lotus.

_Pam was here._

Sookie squeaked in protest as I stopped on the porch, looking out into the weak pre-dawn light.

"Eric!" she shrieked again. "What about Hadley?"

I ignored her. Fuck Hadley. My child was here and might need me, however I was never leaving Sookie alone again. I tightened my grip on her and put my hand over her mouth. I sent my faint apology through our bond. I hated to restrain her, but I didn't have time to explain just how little a fuck I gave about her cousin's welfare.

"Pam," I muttered, calling for her in a quiet tone that she would hear easily.

There was a pause.

Suddenly I detected movement thirty yards left of me. Pam moved out of the treeline. "Eric," she answered, equally quiet. Sookie's human ears did not perceive it.

Carefully, I unhanded her and set her gently to the side. She huffed at my roughshod treatment, but did not protest out loud. Pam walked towards us. I could see my weapon glinting in her hand. She halted before me. I saw nor smelt any evidence of blood on her.

"I drove as quickly as I could. Are you all right?"

I nodded and quirked a brow at her hand. "A gun?"

She shrugged. "Four weres attacked the car when I drove up. This is Prada," she gestured to her suit. "I saw no reason to ruin it." She adjusted her stance and scented the air. "I smell no others. Was that the entire pack?"

"Yes. Are all four dead?"

She nodded. "You'll find them on the driveway. I wish to Christ they'd stay wolves when they died. Naked men are so shaggy and crude."

I chuckled lightly, but was brought up short by Sookie's unspoken reaction. Despite her distress, I immediately felt her indignation. Images of my own body surfaced in her mind. I saw my hairless chest under her hands. I felt her lust as she conjured my long, masculine arms and legs. Awareness prickled my Adam's apple and caressed my short hair. Nimble little fingers traced the lines of my back. I inhaled softly.

She was feeling me up in her mind, convinced there was nothing remotely shaggy or crude as she explored.

I stifled my urge to grab her up and maul her with my tongue. I could tell that she hadn't meant to share her disagreement so viscerally with me. She was simply reacting to Pam's statement. I was forced to ignore it.

I turned to Pam. "You will bury the weres. I will figure out what to tell the Authority."

Sookie gasped. "You can't tell the Authority!" she cried. "What the hell would you say? The you exploded the queen with sunshine?"

"I will think of a plausible explanation for this. But there is no hiding what we've done. The queen and her court are dead. Pam's and my scent are present. The Authority will know of our involvement, one way or another. We must tell them before they find out on their own."

"No."

I spun and pushed Sookie behind me on pure instinct. She squeaked again and protested as Hadley stepped through the front door to join us on the patio. Her face was ashen, her eyes hollow and far away. The tall, sexy girl that had captured the queen's attention now stood broken and dejected as she stared vacantly across the lawn.

"Leave. All of you. I'll take care of this myself."

The lifelessness in her voice stilled me. I moved into her line of sight and fingered her chin until she looked up at me. No spark met my gaze. In a human, it is an unnerving sight.

"You cannot," I chided her. "This requires my attention."

"Sookie requires your attention," she countered quietly. "Like you said, all of this is my fault. I aim to own it."

"There is nothing you can do, human. You cannot evade the Authority."

"I didn't say nothing about evading anybody, Sheriff. I'm just saying they don't have to know about you bein' here. None of you." Her gaze flicked to my child and bonded.

Pam snorted. "What exactly do you plan to do then?"

Hadley shrugged. There was no fear in her now. Merely acceptance. I've seen this many times in my long life. She no longer cared. About anything.

"I'll burn it. All of it."

My eyes widened. She smiled with no joy.

"Well, it's mine, ain't it?"

"No!" Sookie answered.

I held my hand up again. "Let her speak."

Hadley shrugged again. "I'll burn this whole place to the ground. The Authority can question me if they want. I'll say the queen was threatening a war. I waited until daybreak and killed every last one of them."

"And the weres?" Pam jerked her head towards the driveway, no doubt where a neat stack of bodies lay.

The girl cocked her head slowly. "Toss them in the garage. I'll say the queen locked them in there as punishment for something."

I rolled the scenario in my mind. Despite the obvious anxiety I felt from Sookie at the thought of her cousin taking the blame for this, I had to admit it tied everything up nicely. A gasoline fire would obliterate any trace of Pam, Sookie or I. It would destroy the flesh in the parlor. It would obscure the bullet wounds in the weres. And it would save the Authority from having to think too much on the subject. The queen was already suspected of multiple crimes. If a human was responsible for her death, it absolved the vampire community of any liability. It would work out especially well if Hadley managed to convince them that she'd killed her in the name of peacekeeping. But even if they didn't buy her reasons, they would certainly buy her guilt.

That was all that mattered.

I found myself nodding slowly.

"Eric, no," Sookie saw and felt my consideration. "We can't just leave her to set a house on fire and wait for the Authority! What if they just kill her on the spot like vigilantes?"

Hadley moved out of my hold and took Sookie gently by the shoulders. "Then you need to look after my son for me. You'd do that, wouldn't you? Seeing as..." She let her sentence trail off as the two women stared in silent understanding. Sookie shook her head.

"We're not leaving you without protection." She turned to me in desperation, tears threatening to fall from her luminous, dark eyes. Her tears. Goddamn them. My resolve turned soft at their gathering.

"Please, Eric," she entreated softly. "Please don't just leave her here. They'll kill her."

It was certainly possible. I looked over the silly, ignorant pet and knew that the Authority might very well choose to end her life as punishment for the death of five vampires, despite how convenient those deaths were to everyone. Sookie's sorrow bubbled hotly in my mind. I cursed silently. I hated how her despair clawed at my determination. The certainty that leaving Hadley to her fate would stricken my woman filled me with revulsion. I could not injure her. I had to shield her family as best I could.

Pam was uneasy. Dawn was near. We were in enemy territory and vampires disliked going to ground if discovery and staking were even a remote possibility.

I yanked out my phone and made a call.

"Hervaux here."

"Were," I addressed. "This is Northman. Where are you?"

The was a pained pause. "Cypress Bayou. We've got a restoration job up here."

Cypress Bayou. That was useful. It was also north of Shreveport, just thirty minutes away.

"I need you to drive up to Sarepta. There's someone I need you to pick up."

"No," his reply was firm, but not hostile. "We've already agreed that I've paid my family's debt. I'm done with you, Sheriff."

"Fifty grand," I replied dryly. Fuck it. That kind of money meant a lot to most, but in my books it was chicken feed. "Fifty grand for you to come a collect Hadley Stackhouse and return her to Shreveport. You will guard her with your life."

The money gave him pause. As did the name. "Stackhouse?"

"Sookie's cousin," I answered. "She needs protection. Dawn is coming, or I'd do it myself."

Hervaux swallowed. At length, he sighed in resignation. "Text me the address. I can get to Sarepta in twenty."

"She'll be here," I said. "The property will be burning. You are not to interfere, nor call the fire department. Clear?"

"Jesus," he muttered. "Fine. Whatever. Tell Miss Stackhouse that a friend is coming."

He hung up. I did the same.

I turned to the three women waiting behind me and strode up to the pet. She flinched as I moved to bite my own wrist. Blood dripped freely down my arm as I held it out to her. "Drink," I ordered.

Both she and Sookie started in horror. Sookie moved to stop me. I held out my other hand. "It's the only way, lover. Trust me."

Hadley gulped, her eyes round as saucers as she glanced between me and Sookie, "But I don't want -,"

"I told you I don't give a fuck what you want. Sookie wishes to protect you. You will take my blood and my claim. The Authority will recognize it and treat you accordingly."

"But...how will I explain -,"

_Fuck! _ We didn't have time for this. Pam was in danger of the coming sun and this human was wasting time. I stepped forward and shoved my quickly healing wrist between her lips. She choked slightly. I tightened my hold and forced my blood down her throat. Not wanting to frighten her or Sookie too badly, I pet her golden head and explained as I force-fed her.

"The were will take you to my home. You will tell everyone that you burned the queen's lair, then came to me in Shreveport and asked for my claim. I have a liking for your family's blood, so I gave it to you. You're now mine." I lifted my wrist from her bloodied mouth. "Say it."

She swallowed the last of my offering, shaking like a small bird in the cup of my hand. "I asked for your claim. You like my blood. I'm yours."

I nodded slowly. "Good. Very good."

She continued to shake. "Are you going to take it now? My blood?"

Jealousy, which had been simmering in my lover's bond, now exploded in my head with white, hot intensity. She hissed audibly and I couldn't help my smile as I continued to stare down at this creature who could never, ever compare to my love. "No," I replied. "Nor will I. Ever." The bond settled slightly and I bit back a laugh.

"This is our story. People will not question it. I will bite you occasionally so you wear my mark, but I will never take your blood."

Relief flooded her eyes. She shifted nervously and glanced at Sookie. "And...Hunter?"

"Your child?" I queried.

She nodded.

"By extension of you, he is mine. He will not drink from me, nor I from him, but he is mine. The Authority will heed this."

Air hissed out of her lungs in exhausted relief. "Thank you, Sheriff. I...don't know how..."

I turned away from her. Immediately, I swooped in and engulfed Sookie's cheeks in my palms, leaning down and kissing her hard. She gasped at my suddenness, but quickly kissed me back, scorching my mouth with her searing lips. From my side, I sent her reassurance that there was no one for me but her. From her side, she blasted me with feral possessiveness. I was hers. She forced her claim onto me as she lightly bit at my lips and sucked on my tongue. It would have been so easy to lose myself in her. Unwillingly, I pulled back. "For you," I whispered. "I claim them for you."

"I know," her answer was breathless. "Thank you." There was still a thread of resentment in her. She hated that my blood was shared with another. I smiled and kissed her gently one more time before pulling away.

Pam looked at me expectantly.

"Put the weres in the garage. Burn this place to ash."

I turned to Hadley again. "Invite her in."

Hadley nodded and nervously gestured to the front door. "Please come in," she said directly to Pam.

Pam was a blur of movement down the driveway. She zipped back and forth between the house and the were bodies, lifting two at a time. The sun was almost here. Pam was saving her snark for a more convenient time.

Sookie suddenly gasped and made to run past me. I stopped her instantly, hooking my arm around her waist as she made for the door. "No," I ordered sternly.

She struggled against me. "The book!" she cried, looking at me plaintively. "There's an old book upstairs. I need it! It's -," she stopped, looking panicked. "It's about me. About..." she pulled my head to her lips, "...about my people. And _us_."

"Where?"

"A bedroom upstairs. It's out on the bed."

I was gone and back in an instant. It wasn't hard to follow her scent through the house to the room they kept her in. On the satiny bed was a book that smelled ancient. A quick scan of the opened page proved as much. I slipped it closed and shot out again, handing it to Sookie the moment I reemerged. She sighed with relief, tucking it carefully under her arm. I would ask more of it later.

Meanwhile, Pam had doused the entire first floor in various flammables: gasoline from the garage, liquor from the lounge, kerosine. It was done in moments. She came to a halt before me, a book a matches in her hand.

"The queen's death was yours," she acknowledged. "Would you care for her disposal?"

I took the book. "Back away," I ordered the women. Wide-eyed, they obeyed, moving well out into the lawn.

I struck a single match and tossed it into the foyer. Pam had done well, filling the foyer and front rooms with gasoline and the lesser accelerants everywhere else. The match sputtered on its way down, nearly extinguishing before it hit the floor. For an instant, nothing happened, and then the entire entryway exploded to fiery life.

Flames licked up the walls and engulfed the ceiling in seconds. It raced through the halls and devoured all in its path. Wood, stone, brick, textiles. Nothing was spared. They were all eaten in a flurry of orange and red.

I turned once again to Pam. "Take the car. Drive ten miles down the road. Find a secluded spot and go to ground. Now."

My tall, beautiful child bowed and made to run to the car.

"Wait!"

Pam paused as Sookie held out her hand. Looking at me uncertainly, she kept her hand out in a meaningful way. "If...if you're worried about Pam, I could try to...try to shoot her with..."

I caught her meaning immediately. Rage bubbled up, hot and uncontrollable. I growled so low and deadly that all three women froze in fear. "No."

"But...I'm sorry, I just thought she would -,"

"_No!_"

Sookie's hand fell to her side and she stood wide-eyed and silent at my roar. I choked the urge to shove Pam hard towards the driveway. "Go!"

My child was gone. I felt her confusion and slight hurt at my anger. I would make amends later. I cared for Pam deeply, but the thought of Sookie sharing her Light with another - no matter who - filled me with unforgiving wrath towards them. I was furious that Sookie would even dare to offer it. It was mine. She knew this. I would reinforce this when I got her alone. We heard the engine start, then gun down the drive. I looked at the horizon. If she drove ninety miles an hour, she could get a reasonable distance away from this house and whomever might come snooping during the day. Nightfall would then call her from the ground and she would return to Shreveport, no one the wiser. I had already accepted that I would have to buy her another Prada suit after a night in the dirt.

The house blazed merrily behind us now. Nearby trees were wilting in the heat.

I took Sookie by the wrist and checked her watch. Hervaux would be there in less than ten minutes.

"The were will be here shortly. Are you all right here by yourself?" I asked Hadley.

Unable to calm her shivers, her head nodded affirmative in little trembles. I handed her my phone. "Text this address to the last number called. The werewolf will be here within minutes. Trust him. He will keep you safe."

She looked past me. "Sookie?" she questioned.

My beloved nodded emphatically. "He's right, hon. Alcide is a good man. He'll take care of you."

Sookie pulled my arm, turning me towards her. She felt my fury, but pressed with another unpleasant idea. "Maybe I should stay here," she said, eyeing her cousin with worry. "You can...you know...go to ground..." she explained, covering our secret from Hadley. "I'll wait with her and Alcide can take us home."

It was not an irrational plan.

I hauled her up into my arms, jerking her chin in the cup of my palm. "Never."

My eyes were steel as I drilled them into Hadley. "You will wait alone. Keep the phone in case there's trouble. I'm taking my bonded with me."

Again, her head wobbled in frightened agreement. Sookie began struggling in my arms while trying to protect her book in the crook of her elbow. She did not like my brusque manners any more than she liked leaving her cousin defenseless.

Too fucking bad.

I launched us into the air. Sookie gasped and instinctively clutched my shoulders, suddenly desperate for my arms, the arms she'd been pushing at seconds ago. The book pressed tightly between us. "Eric, stop!"

Negation rose up in me and slapped at her indignation as I sped up. I would not stop.

I would never stop.

The sun broke on the horizon and flooded us with its stunning splendor. I barely saw it. I tightened my hold on my lover, staying lower than usual and keeping her out of the colder, higher atmosphere.

I had killed five of my own kind.

I had claimed a human I did not want.

I had endangered my progeny when she could have been gifted with protection.

I had ignored my beloved's wishes to stay behind and guard her family.

I had Sookie in my arms.

She could kick and scream all she liked. She was never leaving them again.


	20. Chapter 20

**A/N:** That's right! Another installment in record time! It's a mortal sin to go too long without lemons. That's in the Bible. Sookie's POV.

Aw, hell no. No no no no. We were not going to fly off into the sunrise until he and I had a conversation.

"Put us down!" I hissed at Eric over the loud whip of the air as we rocketed over empty forest.

He grunted and clutched me tighter. "Not until we're home."

"We're miles from nowhere!" I cried out in annoyance. "No one's even looking for us, and all the vampires have gone to ground. I said land!"

His anger percolated between us, but mine was getting pretty hot, too. His attitude needed some serious readjusting. Okay, so I was trembling with joy, absolutely. I'd been ripped away from him, and the resulting tear had nearly left me blind with inconsolable sadness. And then I'd nearly lost him again under that bitch's nasty-ass mouth. I tried not to think about it, but I knew that if my skin hadn't solidified and if Eric hadn't Radiated, then I would currently be in the ground with her, waiting for dusk when I would rise as her child. Eric would have been staked and gone forever. My life, even my unlife, would have ceased to matter at all. My only hope would have been that my Fae powers hadn't transferred with my turning and the queen, in annoyance, would have staked me on the spot.

Then I would have had the eternity of true death. Hopefully, it would have been enough time to find Eric on the other side.

But he had saved me. We were here together, in the real world.

Just for that, I kissed his jawline, hard and sound. It surprised him. I felt his commitment to his flight plan take a hit.

"Land," I whispered into his skin. "We're safe. You've made us safe."

I waited a tick. "Please?"

Hesitation.

Irritation.

Acquiescence.

"A few minutes," he spoke out loud.

I nodded against him. "A meadow," I requested. "Somewhere out of the shade. It's chilly."

Our path shifted and slowed. The ground got closer and closer until he set gracefully down in a small clearing of tall grass and buttercups.

Once my feet hit the ground, I dropped the book, shoved both our frustrations aside and hugged him ferociously. I'd yell at him in a minute. Right now, I fisted my hands in the back of his t-shirt and burrowed into his broad chest. He also banked his anger, locking his arms around me and grabbing huge handfuls of my dress and hair in his clenching fingers. We pawed each other roughly, neither of us feeling calm enough to be sweet. He cuffed my cheek and dragged my face up while he lowered his. His kiss was more like the claiming, controlled bite of a lion. His strong jaws worked aggressively as he forced his mouth against mine, lips and teeth and tongue. Unable to predict his movements, I opened my mouth and let him take what he wanted. His tongue sought mine instantly. Our teeth clicked against each other, his closing on my lower lip and nibbling carefully. I put my hands on his throat, wanting to feel the vibrations of his hostile growls. They were alpha male noises, ordering me to keep still and accept his manhandling as he took his relief in our harsh embrace.

His hands slid over my bare arms and I moaned, arching into him. The callouses on his palms and fingertips - eternal momentos from his sword-wielding human life - grazed over my skin and snagged my clothing and I reveled in the knowledge that they would _never_ soften.

"Eric," I crooned softly. My voice dripped with longing and pleasure. Wasn't I supposed to be yelling?

His growl deepened. He pulled my hair back and necked me, biting and sucking and bruising his way to my clavicle.

"Take it," I whispered, sliding against him brazenly. "Show me."

Only Eric would have understood such vague instructions. He bit down. I moaned as his fangs sank deep into my eager flesh. His tongue plugged between the sunken points, staunching the flow of blood. He wasn't interested in food. He was reinforcing his claim. Proving to me and to himself that where the queen had failed, he would always succeed. And proving to me that while Hadley and Hunter had his claim, I would always have his undivided soul.

I held his head to me and basked in his ardor. His hands never stopped fondling me from throat to thighs. Our bond throbbed with terrified relief and desire...and yes, still more anger. Even now, I felt mine filter through my passion.

_I hate sharing you._

Eric's tongue swiped his punctures, sealing his mark, and backed off. He'd felt the gist of my statement and eyed me sternly. His hands went hard and disciplinary on my hips.

"What I did, I did for you."

"I know that," I huffed. My own hands fisted stubbornly into his shirt and thumped his chest in reprimand. "Doesn't mean I have to like that Hadley has your blood."

He jerked me roughly. "Anymore than I would like you sharing your Light with Pam?"

"But the sun was coming!" I defended. "I felt your fear for her! I wanted to help!"

"Your Light is mine, lover. I won't share it. Not even with my own child. You'll never suggest it again!"

The soft fabric of his shirt was balled tightly in my hands when I hit him again. Harder this time. "But I have to share you? Is that it? My Light is yours, but your blood can be doled out in shot glasses like Russell's was? Fuck that!"

He roared in frustration, shaking me. "My blood is functional, you infuriating girl. It will protect your foolish cousin and help me monitor her safety. I will force it down a thousand throats if it eases your fear for others."

His rational, exhilarating words shot adrenaline straight from my throat to my groin. I nearly moaned at his towering, hyper-pragmatic adoration of me. It made me all the crazier.

"How is mine different?" I nearly shouted. "My Light can help you and yours. I might be able to make Pam a day walker! Don't you want that for her? Don't you want that vulnerability in her removed?"

"No, goddammit!" His blue eyes turned to glaciers and our bond went critically unstable. My hands were suddenly in his. He crushed them to his chest so hard that I cried out in pain.

"It's mine!" he roared at me. I felt him lodge himself in my brain, trying to force my Light into my hands through the sheer force of his will. I allowed it. My hands glowed warningly on his chest. I was so angry, I half-wondered if I'd infuse him with love or just launch him backwards with fury. Both were fine by me.

"Yes," he hissed as gold light engulfed my hands under his. "Mine, lover. Your Light is equaled by none. I cannot share it, not even with Pam. I would sooner see her dead than to part with it."

His conviction scared me to death. I felt his rabid sincerity. And it wasn't just my Light, either. It was what my Light represented. To him, my Light was my love. It was how it made him feel when I shot him with it. He wallowed in his unique position of being loved and Chosen by a Fae. By me. He guarded his blood, sure. But in the end, he considered it an excellent vintage of V. Nothing more. He didn't ordinarily share it because humans held little sway with him. But he considered my Light a singular force of nature. A ten-point earthquake. Ball lightening. A hailstorm of frogs. A mathematically perfect sphere.

Only much, much more.

He was not a sentimental man. His implacable desire for me had slowly beaten down every objection he'd raised against loving a mortal. Now that desire pounded fiercely between us. I was one of a kind. And he needed me.

My hands intensified on his chest. He hissed in anticipation.

My mind's eye flared. I saw us naked, writing together in the grass of this field, the sun reflecting off his marble skin. I had no sooner wished it and suddenly we were naked as the day we were born, our clothes jerked from our bodies by an unseen force and thrown to ten feet away. I flinched. Only once before had my will become a force of its own, when I unconsciously demanded a chain strangle Rattray.

Eric's eyes widened in disbelief. My hand still pressed into his chest. I surged into him, not infusing him with a fireball like before, but more of an electric shock that had him snarling with pleasure and falling onto his back. I followed and landed on top of him, the wild grass enveloping us.

"Sookie," he grunted, flashing his fangs in feral lust. He gazed hungrily at our nude entanglement. "What have you done?" His hands moved to clasp my hips.

"No."

At my word, his hands dropped like stones against his will. Bracing myself against his chest, I looked into his eyes and saw his astonishment.

He was paralyzed.

My Light had altered. Or I was just discovering another way to use it. I had just willed us naked and didn't want Eric to move. He'd called enough of the shots for one morning. Now it was my turn.

Instinctively, I kept at least one hand on his chest as I slithered over him, rubbing my aching nipples over his chest and delighting in his wolfish growls of frustration. His immobility was driving him crazy. I felt him fighting against it, though it was surprisingly easy to keep him still.

I willed more Light into my hand over his heart. "No," I chided him playfully. "You wanted my Light, now you lie there and take it."

The increase had an electrical effect again. Eric writhed in pleasure, his body going rigid, his spine propelling upwards into my hand.

"Fuck!" he gritted, and began to struggle in earnest. I felt the full effect of a thousand year old vampire fighting against my fairy magic. But I knew. I knew already that in our vampiric bond, he would always be physically superior. But we were ensnared in my Fae desire now, and as my Chosen, as the keeper of my Light, he was mine to control as I saw fit. He had Consented.

Never breaking contact, I slid to his side so I could let my hand roam experimentally over his chest and abdomen. Pleasingly, he still had power over his head. He looked up at me and hissed, hating his inertia, mindless with lust as I stroked him with a luminous form of foreplay. I could feel via our bond what it was doing to him. My humming, constant Light was like a portable orgasm, frying every nerve it came into contact with. He was blank with shock, having no comparison for such foreign eroticism.

"Let me touch you," he rasped angrily.

"No."

"How are you _doing_ this, lover?"

I smiled sweetly, as if I were an old pro at driving men bioluminescently crazy. "You wanted my Light all to yourself, right? I'm going to show you how a tinkerbell thanks her vampire for saving her."

With that, I willed up a burst of love and shot him. Light dove beneath his skin and lit him up like a paper lantern. It illuminated his circulatory system, making him momentarily glow reddish orange. His whole body pulsed once, violently against my hand.

Eric roared as if I'd dipped him in silver. I smiled. The bond told a different story. I forced my way into the short-circuited maze of his mind and filled it with unrelenting waves of lust. I tore and chipped and clawed at any rational thought he tried to muster.

He wanted to go all caveman possessive of his 'little Fae'? Well, this was how little Faes expressed their own sense of ownership. I shoved graphic images into his head, the kind where our hips crashed violently into each other again and again, our screams reverberating in the confines of his skull.

He groaned in exquisite agony.

Oh, and I hadn't even started.

"Wassa matter?" I asked sweetly, keeping my hand on his chest and I slid down between his open legs. His cock pointed accusingly at me, so tight and throbbing that I decided to give it some relief. "Not enjoying my gratitude?"

I pointed my tongue and probed gently over his slit. Precum oozed freely and he snarled in fury.

I grinned at his helplessness. He was so ill-tempered when he didn't have the upper hand.

"Bad boy."

I shot him again, my hand just under his sternum. He lit up once again, howling as pleasure nearly turned him inside out. I licked him from base to tip. His impressive length jerked heavily at the unbearable stimulation from inside and out.

"You look so damn good in the sunshine, baby," I cooed to him, swiping my tongue over his shaft in no particular rhythm. He lifted his head, despite his delirium, to watch me.

"I'll get you for this," he swore darkly. I looked up and found his eyes, dilated and unfocused, as he watched me start to swallow him whole. "Aaaah!" he groaned. "Yes. I'll pay you back. With everything I have."

"Really?" I goaded him. "Can you pay me back for this?" I sucked him madly and shot him again.

My name ripped the small meadow apart, silencing every forest creature in five miles. Eric spasmed beneath me as Light and my enthusiastic blowjob tore his senses to shreds. But he hadn't come yet. I had to hand it to him. The man had stamina.

I released him and looked up into his face. His head had fallen back again, twisting from side to side as he moaned. I raised up a little. His beautiful eyes stared at the increasingly blue sky without seeing it. He was blind.

I smiled again. I could tell it was a temporary blindness. I tapped our connection to monitor his struggles. They'd gone weak. He either didn't have the strength or the inclination to fight my hold on him anymore. Feeling merciless, as he so often was with his love, I tightened my restraint on him.

He felt it, his muscles trembling under the increase in pressure. He moaned at my lack of pity. I laughed and lowered my head, nursing the most perfect erection any woman had ever seen.

I took my time, moving far too slow to give him any relief. A strange mixture of vampire growls and whimpers gave me a tempo to keep time to as I sucked up and down. Up and down. Up and down.

"Lover," he gasped softly.

"Hmmm?"

"You're torturing me."

I lifted from him and - for the first time since our game started - smiled genuinely at him. "You know I only love _you_, right? That I'd never share my Light unless you wanted me to?"

He gasped again and shook his head. "Yes. I know it. I feel it. Your love is mine. It's killing me, it's so strong."

My smile gentled and I eased my Light's grip on him, not enough to let him move, but enough to let him feel my compassion. "And your blood?"

Air wheezed from his lungs. "Hadley and Lafayette have it. I gave it to them to help me secure you as my own. It's yours now. You may keep it or dispense it to whomever you wish me to protect."

The gravity of such an offer stunned me. Sure, it was the same offer I'd made him, but it still struck me as unacceptably risky. Every human claim he granted was an agreement to protect them, no matter what trouble they might bring down on him. My Light, as empowering as it was, would only ever be offered to Pam, who would never tell a soul. Eric's claims had to be public. How much must he love me to surrender such a vulnerability to me?

Still holding him down with both hands, I crawled up his long, lean form until I was perched above his hips. I could feel his cock, still hot and seeking, sliding deliciously against the cleft of my ass. Unthinkingly, I began to rock against it as I spoke.

"I'm honored by the sacrifice you're offering me, Eric. I never want to use it. I want your blood all to myself."

I backhanded him hard across the chest. My gorgeous ruby sliced a paper-thin cut of red above the flat disk of his nipple. I mewled with greed as I leaned down to lick it as it closed. The sweet taste of him had me dry humping his waist. "Mine."

His mouth was working in a circle, his jaw sawing back in forth as it exercised his desire to bite. His eyes were that of a lovesick monster. Strong, murderous...and madly devoted to me.

"Yours," he swore. "Only yours."

"I want to make love to you now."

"Will you let me touch you?" His voice all but begged me.

I giggled. "You don't like my Light anymore?"

"I love your Light," he replied. "But I love _you_ more. Let me have you."

"It must burn you up to have to ask."

He smiled tightly. "I am unused to it, yes. But for you, I plead mercy."

I rocked back, coating his lower belly with my slick lust. "Mercy?"

"Mercy," he pleaded, trying once again to break my hold and thrust up between my spread thighs. "Have mercy."

My Light weakened further. His arms moved fractionally.

I quirked a brow. "You gonna play nice?"

"So nice," he purred, his body gaining power as I slowly let my hands return to normal. He was almost free. Almost.

"No revenge for taking advantage of you?"

"None," his voice dripped like honey. "None at all."

My hands dimmed completely. Eric was loose.

He moved like lightening. His hands were on my hips. I was flipped to my back and I gasped as cool, wet dew drenched my skin. My beautiful liar locked his hips between my thighs, positioned himself at my center, and plunged deep.

A battering ram of masculinity stretched me to the limit and I screamed. Eric roared in triumph, slamming his fists into the ground above my shoulders. They acted as cement pillars, keeping me in place as the power of his ramming hips shoved me backwards.

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

I was shown none of the amnesty I was promised as he gave me no time to adjust to his dizzying size. Thank God I was already wet from my foreplay, because he skipped his gentler speeds and pummeled me at a frenzied, vampiric pace. Ecstasy shot through my body with each thrust as they jackhammered into me. He loomed above me, his face contorted with malice and unparalleled adoration.

I screamed again.

He howled in response. Even my scream was being overpowered. His pubic bone struck my clit at what must have been twenty strokes a second and I orgasmed so hard that my entire body seized around him. I locked him between my arms and legs, screeching like a banshee as I caved spectacularly under his punishment.

"You see?" he whispered over my gasping sobs. "You'll always break for me, girl. You'll break for me more, harder and sooner than I ever shall for you."

He must have plunged into me a hundred times as he spoke. My shoulders repeatedly smacked into his forearms as his hips propelled me up.

A hundred is a lot. As a human, I could only take so much over-stimulation.

I came again, my pussy clenching his cock and showering it with even more wetness. He roared in pride. As powerful as I was, he was convinced he could best me.

"Come for me, Eric," I gasped softly. From the moment we'd started, my hands had been everywhere on him, stroking and grasping and teasing across the smooth topography is his perfect body. "I want to watch you break for me, too."

He grunted loudly and forced more of his weight onto me. "No," he barked. "You'll lie there and come for me all fucking day. You've pissed me off. And you broke your promise to fuck me every night. I haven't had you in twenty fucking hours. You'll pay. For both offenses, you'll pay dearly."

He shoved backwards onto his knees and dragged my hips along with him. I gasped in pleasure as his angle inside me changed. Gripping my ass, he picked up speed again, fucking me in the most delicious way possible as I lay spread out before him. His shaft frisked along the top of my core, right along the nerve endings that led to my clit. I threw my hands back to brace myself in the wet grass and sobbed.

I heard him snarl in approval.

My breasts must have been bouncing enticingly as he pounded into me because one of his hands slithered up my stomach and fondled them appreciatively.

"So fucking sexy," he muttered to himself, squeezing and teasing and making me moan louder with each pass over my hardened nipples.

He grunted with impatience. I felt it boil up in him. He wanted my tits. Right the hell now.

I was hauled up onto his lap as he fell back onto his heels. His pace didn't slow. Hands still gripping my hips, he dipped his head to my right breast and sucked greedily.

"Yes!" I hissed eagerly, wrapping my arms around his back and planting my feet behind me. With my newfound leverage, I was able to counter his thrusts, slamming down on him as his rose up.

"Yesss," he agreed with serpentine pleasure. "Fuck me, angel. Give me my fantasy of prim little Sookie mauling my dick like a whore. _Fuck_ me!"

As usual, he chose a strategic moment to provoke me, a moment when I didn't give a damn what he said because I was too busy mauling his dick like a whore to take offense.

"Come for me, dammit. Right now," I hissed at him, picking up and slamming down harder onto his hips.

His fangs glinted as he hissed in ecstasy. "No," he denied flatly, switching to my other breast and devouring it.

I cried his name in frustration. "Don't make me make you."

"Make me," he goaded fearlessly, not even looking up. "Show me that tinkerbells can make big, bad vampires scream."

It must have been my third cresting orgasm. Or maybe my anger at his insufferable confidence. Or maybe even my desire to prove to myself that, when push came to shove, I could destroy Eric as completely as he did me.

I put one hand against his chest. The other, I slipped between our slamming bodies, turned inward above my soft blonde curls...aimed at his pistoning cock deep within me.

I shot us both.

I screamed. My Light did nothing to me, I merely leapt of the precipice, my body unable to withstand the pleasure he gave me for another second.

Eric roared. My Light not only exploded into his chest and lit him up like the fourth of July, it also torpedoed through my core and detonated across the ten inches of him buried inside me.

I hadn't shot him in anger, but he fell backwards anyway, howling and spasming as he came in wave after debilitating wave. His load erupted with enough force to jolt me slightly in his lap. Our arms instinctively pythoned around each other as we sobbed our way through its intensity.

My eardrums were pounding. We'd been so damn loud. I shivered violently as he fell onto his back again, taking me with him. Dew and pieces of grass plastered themselves to my skin and left me cold.

Amusingly, I burrowed into my vampire for warmth.

"Wow," I murmured absently, holding him, petting him, as we slowly came back to earth.

He grunted, but said nothing. Sensing my chill, he wiped my back off and massaged me with coarse, gentle fingers. The sun was getting warmer. Soon muggy heat would replace the morning chill.

Our trembling eased. My panting slowed. His eyes unclouded and recalibrated, seeing everything with telescopic clarity once again.

Finally, we stilled. Through the calm lapping of our bond, I felt his apprehension resurface. He didn't like being distracted and exposed like this.

We had to get going. What had been a five-minute stop had turned into a thirty-minute battle of sexual wills.

We both made our points. That's what mattered.

I kissed a line across his chest and conceded. "Thank you for saving me. And protecting the people I love."

He buried his hands in my hair and lifted my face to his. His expression was soft and thoughtful as his thumbs swept up and down my cheeks. "Thank you for your gift, lover. I never expected to see the sun again."

I smiled wanly. "I'm sorry I didn't have time to wrap it."


	21. Chapter 21

A/N: Dudes! So sorry it took a little longer than usual to post. Stupid real life stuff getting all up in my grill. Your reviews still knock me for six. I love you guys so bad. As a treat, we're still in the meadow, i.e. the lemon grove. Eric's POV.

Perhaps Sookie had been right.

Back at the mansion, I'd picked her up from where she'd fallen and she'd thanked her god out loud, convinced that he'd killed us both and reunited us in Heaven. Her thanks had upset me at the time. She wasn't allowed to welcome her death, even if I had met mine. I'd shaken her to her senses, not giving a second thought to her prayer.

But now I lay in a forest on a blindingly bright day, basking in the nude with my love. I'd been suspended and fucked by her luscious cunt, which had clearly been custom-made for my pleasure, as I gazed up into the sun. She'd shown me sexual talents that I've never encountered or even heard about. Her Light was evolving. Or she was realizing its fuller potential. With a thought, she had torn my clothes off, sucked me until my dead heart gave out, then resuscitated it so that I couldn't die under her torment. It was the oldest tool in a torturer's arsenal. Drive the victim to the brink of death, revive them, then make them endure another bout with hell.

Except her destination hadn't been Hell. Quite the opposite. She'd shown me how angels fuck the brains out of demons. She'd convinced me that yes, we had died in Sophie Anne's palatial eyesore, and I was now experiencing Heaven. Namely, getting fucked by Sookie Stackhouse in a forest all our own, her body electrocuting mine, charging me with warmth and light and love until I was left buzzing like industrial power cables. That was my sentence. An eternity of making love in the light.

It was only the pull of my strengthened bond with Hadley, which told me she was now moving south, that kept me tethered to reality.

This was only a temporary Heaven. I couldn't lie here indefinitely and enjoy the way Sookie's hips adhered to mine so enticingly, my cock still locked deep in her tight, hot flesh as she hummed softly and traced nonsense on my skin. Ah, but to try. She smelled of sex, sunlight and the wilderness. And remarkably, so did I. The last thing I wanted to do was dress and obscure those new, alluringly human scents that clung to my skin. Sunlight, of all things. And not just the transferred scent of it, as was common when vampires bedded sun-bathing pets. It was the real deal.

Perhaps we didn't have to leave. Not right away. The werewolf and pet wouldn't enter Shreveport for more than an hour. I could fly it in twenty minutes.

And it was more than just wanting to lie in the sun with my bonded and enjoy her body. Her behavior was in dire need of address.

Her new little trick, namely. My human was capable of overpowering me physically. And worse, she was capable of injecting me with shot after shot of raw ecstasy until I buckled under the exquisite pleasure.

Un-fucking-believable.

Clearly, she didn't appreciate the repercussions of using it against me. She was draped sweetly across me, thoroughly fucked and waiting for me to urge her to her feet once I regained my bearings. She didn't realize that she'd crossed a line. No one outmaneuvered me and walked away unpunished. And before another distraction, before another goddamn shit storm hit us and kept me out of her arms, she was going to learn that lesson. We had a little time. Just a little time. I wanted what I was owed.

"We're not finished."

Sookie looked up from drawing patterns on my chest. Her glazed eyes hadn't been focused on anything in particular. She blinked a few times, her pupils sharpening.

Her brow furrowed. "Huh?"

I shook my head slowly. "I told you you'd pay. You've committed two wrongs against me. You've barely paid for one. Another penalty is due, Sookie."

She smirked impishly. "Pashaw. One of those 'wrongs' was getting kidnapped and - through no fault of my own - depriving you of sex. The other was giving you sex. I'm pretty sure they cancel out."

"Giving me sex, lover? You paralyzed and assaulted me."

Her eyes grew round, and suddenly she burst into laughter. She lifted up higher and pointedly raked her eyes over my body, significantly larger than her own. "Assaulted you? You gonna cry date rape on me, vampire? You were just walking along, minding your own business, and a 120-pound human lunged out of the bushes and took you by force?" Her whole body shuddered with giggles as she squeezed the dense circumference of my upper arms. Making a point, no doubt. Even if I were human, she'd be no match for me.

I kept my amusement off my face. I grabbed both her hands, holding them together and kissing them wetly. "You drugged me with these. Then you disabled me. More efficiently than silver ever could."

A dreamy expression crossed her face and she undulated against me, her pussy embracing my presence with teasing little ripples. "Silver is so mean, though. Don't you prefer my method of disabling you?"

Her wetness was spiking the air and provoking my dick. I shook my head to dispel its drugging affect, but with no success. She was pulling me under again. She didn't even need her fucking Light to do it. "You're not allowed to just freeze me at will, sweet Fae. I forbid it."

She clenched me again in her womb and I hissed. Her smile turned wicked. "Forbid is such ungentlemanly word."

Enough was enough. I deeply regretted that I didn't have more time. For this particular lesson, I had planned to set aside weeks. Ease her into it carefully. Educate her on exactly what it meant to take me as a lover. Because it was her, I would have been exceptionally gentle, more than I'd ever been with any woman. Because it was her, I would have spent time denying myself satisfaction to ensure that she found pleasure in my teachings. My body, capable of great force, would have been muzzled, allowed only to caress and soothe and excite.

I could not recall an instance where I'd cared enough to suppress my desires so completely.

But Sookie, as always, broke my patience.

She would have my gentleness. But she would not have time.

Her little stunt required retaliation. Before we left this meadow, I would hear her scream in mindless submission to me.

"Get on your knees."

Amusement quirked on her side of the bond. I felt her smile as she lowered her lips to my chest, kissing lazily. "Don't we need to get a move on?"

"No. You'll do it now."

Combativeness filled her and suddenly her hips shot upwards, dislodging me from her silky warmth. I hissed in dislike as cool air hit my cock. She'd done it on purpose. My eyes narrowed in disapproval as she smiled primly at me and rose to her knees, one on either side of my waist. Nothing but the sleek skin of a sun goddess filled my vision. Supple thighs flared into two hips that made my fingers itch to cup and pull downward. They dipped into a slim waist, which led to a distractingly feminine tummy and pert, rounded breasts. Even her arms were annoyingly adorable- slender, yet soft and strong. The familiar feeling of being yanked in opposite directions bit deep inside me. I wanted to fuck and drink her until there was nothing left. I wanted to tear my own chest open and place her inside, protecting her fragile body from all the horrors of the world. Destroy her in an orgy of blood and sex. Protect her to the point of destroying myself.

I snorted. Who the fuck was this woman?

She was looking down at me expectantly. She'd done as I'd bade.

"_Hands_ and knees, lover. Don't get cute with me."

Her eyes lost some of their teasing and she didn't move from her perch. Usually during sex, I simply tussled us into whatever position I wanted. She was always willing, until she pushed back at me with a preferred position of her own. I loved that about her, never afraid to shove right back. But now I was ordering her. Something I did with most humans. She wasn't used to it. She didn't trust it entirely.

"Why? What are you going to do?"

She gasped when she suddenly found herself in the exact position I'd asked, and now had forced. "You question me too much," I growled from behind her, lowering myself to her ear. Her lush hips filled my hands once again as I crowded them. My knees were between hers, but they were not far enough apart for my liking.

"Spread yourself wider. Arch your back."

She gasped and tried to look over her shoulder at me. I gripped her hair, gently, but enough to keep her face forward. "Eric?"

"Hush," I clipped.

Without warning, I slipped my fingers between her deliciously semi-parted thighs. "More," I commanded again. "I said open up."

Shivering, she obeyed and opened her knees wider, arching her back, thrusting her ass higher in the air. My fangs ran down at the sight. That ridiculously slim waist amplifying into two perfect globes, and she was offering all of it to me.

_Me._

The foreign sensation of biological need erupted in me. For a moment, the long-dead man in me wanted to fuck this woman until that tiny waist was slim no longer. My claim to her would be more evident that my bite ever was, swelling her womb with proof of my ownership. My fingers moved firmly through the glossy wetness of her folds. She mewled, twitching against me. I shoved those thoughts aside and concentrated on the task at hand.

She was wet. Pleasantly so. But more was needed.

"Very good, lover," I praised quietly. "But you must do better." My fingers were not sensual. They sawed back and forth, teasing more of her sweet lubrication. She bucked and murmured, confused at my tactics, longing for more than I was giving her.

"Better than what?" she asked. "What are you doing to me?"

I enjoyed the small, girlish quality of her voice. So uncertain. Trusting, yet not sure if she ought to. I grinned and continued my fondling, keeping my digits nestled against her, but never penetrating her. I made sure to tap her clit with each pass and she jolted at the unexpected electricity that accompanied them. Fucking right. Little fairies needed to learn they weren't the only ones capable of shocking their lovers with a single touch.

I huffed at her, releasing her hair and grasping her hip, making her pump on my hand. "More," I barked. "I need you wet. Wetter than you've ever been."

She cried out, moving her hips as I guided them. Their graceful to and fro strained my leash even more. Without thinking, I abandoned my manual stimulation of her and yanked her against my groin. My cock replaced my fingers, nestling deep between her folds and teasing her from clit to cleft as I resumed our rhythm. Her divine juices instantly coated me. It increased heavily in volume and in perfume.

"Oh, my God," Sookie moaned in a harsh, throaty voice. "Eric, pleeease!"

"No," I denied flatly, slamming my hips into hers, priming her with the promise of aggressive sex, yet delivering nothing more than cock petting.

"But I'm wet," she panted, arching back into me, trying to wrangle me into her body, splaying herself wide and chipping at my precious control. "More than enough to take you."

"Innocent sweetheart," I grunted. "Fuck yourself against me if you must. Come if you can, but do not ask for penetration."

She keened in annoyance and shoved against me hard, working herself into a frenzy. Her outer folds trembled with frustrated stimulation. Her temperature was rising. Her slick essence was the same vintage as the other night in my bar; desperate and ready. I clenched my teeth and bore it. It was agony. With her body spread wide to my gaze, my eyes devoured the golden hue of her skin as it blossomed into virgin pink at her center. Despite fucking me daily, those sweet little folds looked as tight and inviting as a woman who'd never known a man. And between them, she was fulfilling my fantasy; bathing my rigid cock until every inch of it glistened with her need.

"So gorgeous," I praised, undulating until I was buried tighter between them. "Seeing you like this makes me want to fuck every inch of your body."

Sookie moaned and shoved backward. The force of her smooth flesh nearly made me pull back and plunge straight into where she wanted me so badly. I yanked her into me instead, slamming my balls against her core.

"Pleeease!" she cried out. "Eric, I need you! I'll do anything you want! I'll say anything you want! Just fuck me! Ungh!"

"I _will_ fuck you," I promised, exploding in speed. "I'll fuck you as you fucked me. Now come. Drench my cock like a good girl."

She screamed as her superficial orgasm broke through her.

"Fuck you!" she moaned in disappointment, the small relief doing nothing to ease her desire. Such a shallow climax would never sate my Fae ordinarily. If my plan was to end now, she wouldn't speak to me for weeks, I was certain.

My jaws were still locked tight as I eased her down, pumping slower. Her wetness had soaked me from base to tip and dripped to the grass beneath us. It was sufficient.

With her mind still fuzzy from the tame waves of fondling, I withdrew from between her folds and nestled my tip against the taut aperture of her ass.

I gave her as much warning as she'd given me.

I pressed forward knowing that my slick head would help breach her, as would her relaxed muscles that were still tingling from dopamine.

Sookie gasped and stiffened under my hands. "What are you doing?"

I smiled tightly. "Fucking you, lover. What does it feel like?"

I pressed very slowly, easing back and forth to help loosen this obvious virgin territory. I had not asked, but I'd suspected as much. Bill had not taken her this way.

"But..." she gasped again, her hips tensing in my hands. I massaged them, willing her to stay spread and calm. "But, this is...it's not..."

"You fucked me with Light until I broke for you," I reminded her. An inch of me was engulfed in the hottest, tightest Nirvana I'd ever known. It took all of my concentration to talk. "Now I'm fucking you in the ass until you break for me."

"Eric." My name was stiff in her mouth. "But you're too...too big..." She let out another gasp as she endured the initial pressure. Indeed, I was big. And she was mind-blowingly narrow. My eyes rolled back as she accepted another inch.

"Relax, Sookie," I soothed through grit teeth. "It will get easier. Trust me, lover. Do you trust me?"

She was shivering now. Her small frame vibrated between my hands, but she did not pull away. I continued to pump carefully, noting with satisfaction that her wetness was adequately lubricating her delicate flesh and granting me deeper access. I grunted in delicious torture as she murmured, "Yes, baby. I trust you. But it's just so - oh!"

She cut off and groaned long and gratified.

I felt it. The clenched barrier had relaxed. My entry was now embraced. Still gloriously tight, her body accepted more of me without resistance. Now she would know. She'd understand how it felt to be shocked, fucked and delirious. It was only fair.

"Oh, my God," she mewled softly. Her whole body melted under me. Her arms collapsed under her weight and her head fell to the ground as I eased another two inches inside her.

"Yessss," I encouraged. "Take me, Sookie. So tight. So innocent. Beautiful...angelic little...aaaagh!" I lost my words as her tight walls contracted around me. She was pulling me in.

"More," she rasped desperately, pushing back, though not as recklessly as before. "Fuck me more. I can't believe this feels so _good_!"

More than halfway inside her, I suspended my dive and began to pump briskly, my deeper groans joining her soft ones. "Wanted this," I gritted out. "Wanted this from the moment I saw you."

Not easily broken, my lover provoked, "Fucking my ass while I begged you for more?"

"Fffffuck!" I swore darkly. I sank another inch against my will, her words fraying my precious control. "Watch your mouth or I'll split you in half."

She was quickly going mad with pleasure. Her hair tossed back and forth, glinting in the light. She squirmed restlessly, seeking a relief she hadn't even known existed. Thousands of nerve endings, dormant until now, crushed my cock in desperation, aching for release. I should have known she'd be an apt pupil. I had only just begun, convinced she would eventually adjust to this newness. I'd had no doubts she would bloom under such intimate instruction.

We are so similar, she and I. Her sexual appetite had no patience for my gentleness.

"Errric!" she moaned. "Please," she begged. "You're being so careful. I can feel your need to be careful, but I want more. Please? Just a little more?"

I'd been grasping her hips, preventing them from driving back too forcefully onto my cock. I knew what she wanted, but I couldn't risk her tearing her feminine flesh. I cursed and gripped them harder. "Stop moving," I instructed. "You'll injure yourself."

She squeaked and stilled, arching her back to the point of cracking, giving me all the access I could ever dream of. "Yes!" she agreed breathlessly. "God, you're driving me crazy!"

"Then we're even," I muttered, pressing slowly until, to my astonishment, she'd accepted me fully. "Jesus fucking Christ," I gasped harshly. "Perfect girl. Perfect, infuriating, wondrous girl."

Holding her tightly, I began to thrust. All of me.

I had taken both women and men this way. I had been aggressive. I had fucked them, both whore and novice, until the inevitable wave of euphoria took me. I had known all depths. All levels of experience. All degrees of willingness.

But nothing compared to this.

"Sookie," I moaned reverently.

She moaned with me, her head thrown back in rapture. She moved with me, rocking her hips in perfect unison with mine.

I swore loudly, cursing her for beguiling me again. My control was crushed. My lesson forgotten. I was blind again. Overpowered again. Yes, I was fucking her. But once again, she'd managed to introduce me to another alien sexual experience. We were also making love. Gentle, trusting, mutual love.

I bit down on my lip as bliss gripped me. "Tell me," I pleaded. "Tell me you feel it, too."

"Errric." The sweetest moan of pleasure man had ever been responsible for. "You love me," she crooned, looking back over her shoulder. Her smile was drugged with scrumptious satisfaction as I worked her unexplored channel with a master's proficiency. Every fuck of my life had been in preparation for the crescendo of Sookie Stackhouse. She was a masterpiece. She deserved my thousand years of training.

"Yes," I replied, daring to move slightly faster.

"I feel it," she whispered. Her hips swirled under my hands and bent me in a tight figure-eight. I growled deep in my chest. "I'm so close," she whimpered, moving faster, matching my pace with her figures. "It's so different. I didn't know it could feel like this."

"Come for me," I urged her, my cock quickly overtaking my determination. If she didn't come soon, I would suffer the additional indignity of climaxing before my human lover. When I filled Sookie's ass with my seed for the first time, she was going to be a screaming, shivering tangle of limbs. Anything less was disgraceful.

"I want to," she groaned as we surged together. "Talk to me. Anything. Just lemme hear your voice."

I snarled quietly. "My voice?"

She nodded frantically, bucking uncontrollably. "So deep," she murmured distractedly. "So scary...safe...angry...you."

I couldn't bear it. I fell forward, catching myself on one hand beside hers, covering her back with my chest. The change in angle made us moan with pleasure.

"_Talk to you?_" I switched to Swedish. "_Shall I tell you how many thousands I would kill for you?_"

My free hand roved forcefully along her belly before cupping each breast in turn. "Yes!" she panted, turning her head my way, seeking my kiss. I gave it to her.

"_Shall I frighten you with how violent you make me?_"

She pressed soft, uncomprehending kisses to my lips as I manipulated her nipples between my fingers. I could still taste her blood in my mouth. I was nearly undone. I needed her to break soon or I was finished.

"_Shall I atone for losing you to the queen? Or is this sweetness your forgiveness?_"

"So close," she whispered, moving her kiss to my cheek. "So close, Eric."

"_I'm a slave_," I admitted in words she didn't understand. "_Your slave. Show me that you're my slave, as well._"

She went rigid beneath me. The tight confines of her passage collapsed, dragging me into euphoric madness.

She came screaming my name as I came screaming hers. I had fallen prey to my own teachings. Never would Sookie break for me, not unless she took me with her.

I jetted hot and hard into her body, trembling and shouting in a dozen antique tongues. My instincts overwhelmed me. I bucked hard against her, my entire body demanding entry. Every buck was met with hungry acceptance. Had it been possible, Sookie would have sheltered all of me. I roared at her loving nature. It hypnotized me.

She moaned again, the last of her shivers passing through me.

"Oh, my God," Sookie stammered softly. "Oh my God, Jesus God, I..."

I rose up slightly, sliding my hands up and down her curves.

"Beautiful," I murmured, pressing kiss after kiss between her shoulder blades. "So goddamn sweet and beautiful."

"Eric, I -," she gasped as I withdrew from her carefully. I could have happily stayed buried there for the rest of my life, but it wasn't prudent to remain in that particular place. Her flesh needed to recuperate. Despite our debilitating pleasure, micro-tears might have surfaced.

I pricked my finger. "Yes, lover?" I salved the outer flesh with my blood, healing any possible wounds.

She gasped again, twisting towards me. "Am I hurt?"

"I won't allow the possibility."

"Oh." Her voice was small.

My separation from her felt unnatural. We weren't close enough. She was _never_ close enough. I folded into an Indian-style seat and pulled her sideways into my lap. She came easily. Once I settled her, I swept her hair from her neck and buried my nose against her throat, breathing deeply. Of all of her scents, this was my favorite smelling Sookie. Fairy blood. Youth. Clean sweat. Sex. Pleasure. My blood. My semen. Me.

She put her arms around my neck and sighed.

"That was amazing," she said.

I nodded, not raising my head. "For me as well."

She cocked her head, allowing my lips to join my nose against her. "Are you hungry?" Her tone suggested she was curious, not simply offering.

I shook my head. She always pricked my bloodlust, but now was not the time.

She laughed softly. "So you just want to cuddle?"

I chuckled at the term. "I crave your nearness, yes. It calms me."

"You're always calm."

"Correction, lover. I'm always still. My mind is rarely calm."

I felt her facial muscles widen against my forehead. A smile. "And I calm you?"

"Yes."

Happiness bubbled from her mind to mine. It was astonishing how such unvarnished things as honesty pleased her.

"I almost lost you today. You calm me. You offer yourself to me in every way. If I were to give you a gift for these things, what would you ask for, Sookie?"

I lifted my head in time to see her eyes light up. "Will you help me with my book?" She looked over her shoulder to the tome resting in the grass near our clothes. She looked back at me and shrugged her shoulders. "The language is old. I can't make sense of a lot of it. But I think it might help explain what happened back there."

I snorted. "Done. Now ask for a proper gift."

She made a face. "Decent folks don't _ask_ for gifts, Eric. It's rude."

"Tell me what you desire, or I'll simply add another story to your house."

Her eyes rounded. "You wouldn't."

"Or I'll tear your sad little car into scrap and replace it with my Lotus."

She slapped at my chest. "Hush! I don't want your damn car. It looks like something a strip club owner would drive."

I laughed and tugged her closer, my nose bumping hers. "Tell me," I crooned softly. "Tell me tell me tell me."

She huffed and gave an inch. "Flowers. Send me flowers."

"The rarest orchids in the world. Fifty of them."

"Ugh!" she cried. "Daisies."

"Daisies are weeds."

"Yeah, well orchids are sissies. They always die, no matter what you do."

"I'll hire you a botanist to take care of them."

Sookie quivered in my lap, giggling. "I said daisies. Anything fancier is coming back to you as mulch."

"So cruel," I purred, kissing her languidly. "You would kill my gift?"

Her teasing smile softened and she kissed me back, levering up in my lap. "You," she whispered simply. "I want you. That's all."

I growled, clutching her tighter. "My love," I kissed the words below her ear. "That is something you will never lose."

She shivered and nodded.

"We should go," she mumbled, regret tugging the corners of her mouth. "I want to get home and make sure Hadley's okay."

I bit my tongue and nodded. I would not anger her by censuring those she loved. Her ability to love so completely was one of the many things that drew me to her. To criticize its recipients would do nothing but spark an argument. Instead, I stood, holding her up in my arms. She slid to her feet, her hands reluctant to leave my neck. She stayed pressed to me, looking up into my eyes.

"Promise me we get to be normal soon. Just you and me, working and sunrises and making love in an actual bed."

My forearms locked around her waist. She pulled up. I lowered down. We met in the middle, angel and demon, kissing hard.

"Soon," I promised her.


	22. Chapter 22

**A/N:** Sookie's POV. Love to all!

We made it to his house in record time. Eric had kept to the air above the forest, not risking roads or suburbs, places where people could see us overhead. Unlike when I had come to his house a few nights ago, we now needed several security clearances at the door, including a retina scan from Eric, to get inside. Strange. I mean, I guess all those things would have kept a few out, but like Jason always said, locks only keep out honest thieves. Since Eric was a vampire and thus any vampire could enter his home, I didn't really think a retina scan would stop them, not when they could just tear the door off its hinges. Same went for humans. Or weres. They only (in the past) had to wait until sunrise and they could have done pretty much anything to get inside. Or just burn it ala Sophie Anne's place.

Still, I supposed something was better than nothing. Maybe the house was kept under a human name to bar other vampires, like Sophie Anne's had been. I'd ask about it later.

Meanwhile, I guessed Alcide and Hadley could just ring the doorbell when they got here.

Kitty Eric met us as we entered the front door. I instantly felt guilty, leaving him alone for so long, and in a huge, foreign house. He slithered between our feet, meowing his hellos and butting his head into our ankles. I reached down to stroke his fuzzy head.

"Good boy," I cooed to him. His purr exploded at the attention. Eric chuckled deeply.

The cat food bowl was beside the door, still brimming with kernels of brown. His water was equally fresh and plentiful. Thank goodness for that. I'd have felt twice as much guilt if he'd been hungry as well as lonely. I pet him briefly until he was satisfied and wandered off into the living room.

My other Eric wasn't so easily contented.

He didn't speak as he led me to his bedroom and into the master bath. Once there, he turned the shower on and grabbed the hem of my dress.

"Undress me," he mumbled as he lifted my dress up and over my head. I smiled faintly, unbuttoning the top of his jeans, then slowly lowering his fly. The backs of my fingers rubbed along the harsh V of his lower stomach muscles. Sex muscles, Layfayette called them. I couldn't disagree. He kicked off his shoes and stripped out of his t-shirt. I loved watching him arc high in the air, his long arms and torso twisting out of the cotton. He shoved his pants to the floor and pulled me close. My ear pressed directly into his sternum as he folded me up in his arms. I laughed softly at the sheer altitude of him. It was something I was still getting used to. I'd always rested my head on Bill's shoulder when we...

I took a sharp breath.

"No," I muttered sadly. I wouldn't do this now. I wouldn't mourn for Bill in Eric's arms. Later. When I'd had some sleep and a little distance from everything that had happened. I was still operating on adrenaline and relief right now. I didn't want to start crying for him. Not now.

Eric felt my sadness and guessed its origin. The unspoken name of the dark vampire settled between us. Surprisingly, Eric didn't get angry. His fingers filtered into my hair and to my amazement, he started rocking me softly.

"You're allowed to grieve, Sookie," he said into my hair, stroking my bare back with a warm hand. "I know you loved him."

At his words, I sniffed slightly. "You're not upset?"

"I am for you. You cared for him and he betrayed you. Now his death pains you. I regret that pain."

I looked up at him, craning my neck all the way back. "You hated him, didn't you?"

Eric's eyes were hard and soft at the same time as he gazed back. "I felt nothing for him at all. He was a vampire in my territory. One name in a thousand kept in my ledger. Until..." He touched my face carefully. "...until the night he brought you to my bar. Until he refused to relinquish you to me. From that moment, I have despised him."

I gave him a broken smile. "I wouldn't have accepted you, even if he had."

The blue flashed, then settled. "I would have made it very hard for you to walk away."

"Another lovely stay in your dungeon?"

The soft disappeared, the hard remained. "I regret that as well. I hope I would not have imprisoned you, had Bill released you. However, had I tasted you first, before I knew you, it's possible..." He stopped again, his jaw clenching. "...probable...that I would have chained you up and never let you go."

I couldn't say I was surprised. Still. "Against my will?"

His palms swallowed my cheeks, trapping my face between his fingers. "Your defiance only increases my desire for you, Sookie. Had I possessed you before I fell in love with you, I would probably have killed you. Your blood, your anger, your purity, they would have unhinged me."

I didn't answer. Again, I wasn't all that shocked. I'd be a fool if I saw Eric as anything other than what he was, and that meant that the man holding my face like a priceless piece of china was a blood-sucking killer. Thousands and thousands and thousands of people, dead at his hands. In that respect, I was no better than those women who wrote love letters to serial killers. The only difference was that I actually got to know my killer personally first - which, let's be honest - didn't erase the fact that I had questionable-ass taste in men.

I put my hands over his. "Then I guess Bill did me one favor; he fended you off until you tipped ass over teakettle for me."

He smiled that ancient, amused smile. "Indeed." He closed his eyes and placed a slow kiss on my forehead. "But I do not resent your need to mourn."

"You're sweet," I replied. "But I don't want to mourn right now. I'm tired."

It was true. Neither of us had slept recently, just a nap in his backyard the day before. I had been salivating over a long sleep ever since I'd found my book. Now, I was positively exhausted. I knew Eric was no better off. Blood was peeking from his ear canals. Aside from when he cried and he bled from his eyes, which I'd only seen once, the one place I hated seeing blood on Eric was his cute little ears. I can't say why, but it really got to me. Maybe because it reminded me that Eric wasn't invincible. Maybe because bloody noses and tears (albeit bloody tears) were still normal occurrences in human beings. But blood in the ears was an alarming sight. It made my hands twitch for a First Aid kit.

I'd put him to bed immediately. But first, a shower sounded nice.

We stepped in together and gave each other a very half-assed soaping. Aside from holding him, I didn't have the energy to clean him with my usual diligence. He was the same, filling his hands with gel, but only using them to slide along my arms and back. I didn't care. The heat of the spray and the comfort of his closeness were all I really wanted. Once we toweled off, Eric shouldered into a black silk robe that he left untied and handed me something from the hook beside it.

I held it out to study, then looked back at him questioningly. It was nothing like what I'd expect him to dress me in.

He caught my look and shrugged, reaching out to finger the soft, simple white cotton with little pink flowers on it. "Would you prefer something else?"

I shook my head hard, turning the robe in my hand this way and that. "No. It's fine. It's very...me, actually. I just thought you'd pick something more -,"

"Suggestive?" he supplied, smirking slightly.

"Yeah," I nodded. "Suggestive. Silky, like yours. And short. Something that got you all hot and bothered."

He took the robe from me and opened it up. I turned and slipped my arms into it as he held them out for me. I turned to face him, tying it up. When I looked up, I was startled to see he did indeed look very hot and bothered. His fingers slipped under the little lapels and he tugged me into his chest. I put my hands on his arms to steady myself as he continued to leer at me.

"I have seen you in this," he muttered, his thumbs caressing the tiny triangle of skin at my throat. "I dreamed it once. You seduced me in it."

My eyes widened. "I _seduced_ you? Wearing this?"

I looked down at myself. At best, it was upper class WalMart in style. It fell to my calves. It didn't cling or entice in any way. It was just a floral-print afterthought to a bath. I looked back up and marveled. He obviously saw something else entirely.

He leaned down to kiss me and I caught the sight of blood next to his sideburns. I cupped his face and kept the kiss shallow, nuzzling his cheek while broadcasting my worry. His fantasy would have to wait.

"The bleeds," I whispered.

"I know."

I tugged his hands and led him to bed. As he lay down, I noticed a small, black, rectangular box on the pillow next to his. My pillow, I guess.

"What's that?"

He settled back, looking over briefly. "For you."

"I said flowers," I chastised him. "You already do too much."

"This is not a gift, lover," he said, plucking the box up and holding it out to me. "This is for balance."

"Balance?"

He looked at me expectantly and I smiled in good-natured annoyance. I took the box from him, sitting on the mattress next to his supine form, and opened it.

A beautiful, oddly-shaped pendant greeted me inside. It was silver in color, as was its chain, though I was sure it was either white gold or platinum. An elegant teardrop, less than two inches in length. There was no decoration, however it had a slight three-dimensionality to it. A paper-thin line ran close around the base. I picked it up from its cushioned nest to examine it. The weight surprised me. Between my pinched fingers, I let it spin slightly from its chain.

"It's so pretty," I said quietly, watching the flattened drop turn.

He chuckled. "Is it?"

I looked at him. "You don't think so?"

"I'm glad it pleases you, however it is not meant for aesthetics."

I frowned. "Then what's it meant for?"

Smirking, Eric reached out and pinched the base of the teardrop between his thumb and index finger. Gently, he pulled. I gasped as the base slid free and something fell into his hand. He held it up for me to see. A double-edged dagger, as small and slender as an arrowhead, greeted me. The base of the teardrop was actually the hilt, designed to fit perfectly between two fingers. The miniature blade was beautiful, glinting and razor-sharp. The rest of the pendant still hung from my hand, the now-triangular sheath bottomed-out and hollowed. A tiny little weapon, separated between the two of us.

I smiled and bit my lip playfully. "A sword for my Barbie?"

Eric pinched the hilt and held it out to me. "For you, lover."

I took it from him, chuckling as I parried and struck the air with the tiny blade. "To battle itsy, bitsy dragons with?"

He caught my hand and drew me up against him. I gasped as I fell onto his chest. Still holding my hand, he brought the blade to his throat. "To make us equal," he explained. "This blade is for my blood."

My fingers instantly pulled the dagger away from his skin. My brow furrowed as I regarded him. "But you're perfectly capable of giving me your blood. Why do I need this little thing?"

With that, Eric rumbled. God, I loathed and adored that sound. When he laughed like that, my whole body melted and demanded my brain shut up and just give him whatever the hell he wanted.

He petted my sides as he spoke. "I can only reach my arms." He leered. "Did you always want it from such a chaste source?"

"I...I don't know," I admitted, arching under his lazy strokes. "I guess I never thought about it."

"Well," he drawled. "I know that if I were restricted to your wrists, Sookie, I'd feel very...cheated."

"Blood's blood, ain't it?" I knew damn well it wasn't. Hell, every place he bit me was like discovering a new G spot.

"It's more than blood," he tsked, palming my ass to make his point. "For example, you know I've only had you from your wrist once."

I nodded, drawing small circles in the insanely soft silk of his robe as he spoke.

Eric's eyes glittered at the memory. "You saved me. You fed me willingly. Your wrist will always be special for that reason. However," he grabbed my ass and hitched me higher, harder, onto him. Our lips almost met. Our unequal bodies lined up as best they could. He lifted his head to whisper into my mouth. "Drinking from your wrist means you didn't want me to die."

He kissed me softly. "But drinking from your throat? Means you trust me."

He kissed again. Harder. "Drinking from your breasts? Means you fuck me."

I moaned as his lips slipped under my chin and his hands stoked fire all over my body. "Drinking from your thighs, the most dangerous, intimate place? Means you love me, Sookie."

"I do," I whimpered softly. "Oh, God, I do."

"So," he concluded, licking me from ear to pulse point. "I want you to wear this," he tapped the blade. "I want you to drink from me. Anywhere you wish."

I hummed and shimmied on top of him. "Anywhere?"

I felt him smile against my pulse. "Shock me," he challenged haughtily.

"Fightin' words, vampire."

"Do your worst, little fairy."

I giggled and levered up slightly. Looking at him playfully, I dragged the blade lightly against his lips. "Weeeeell," I drew out, obviously thinking hard. "I've already had you here." I lowered again, moving the blade, and kissed his mouth, touching his healed tongue with my own. Just that evening, he'd cut it as we'd kissed, giving me a precious few drops.

I lifted up and he growled, disliking a broken kiss.

I slid the small dagger down his cheek, circling it over his pulse. "And twice from here." Again, I moved the blade and replaced it with my mouth, sucking and kissing into the spot where I'd sucked silver shrapnel from him, and then also two inches lower where I'd taken our second blood bond.

Eric was making some kind of pleased, frustrated growl as I pushed his open robe to either side, exposing his nudity as I dragged the dagger lower.

"Here," I kissed into the other site of shrapnel I'd extracted before I licked a line to another invisible marker. "And here," I claimed where my ring had sliced him earlier, tonguing just above his nipple.

"Sookie," he muttered warningly.

I grinned against him. "What? You said anywhere. I'm weighing my options."

He grumbled something and I thought I heard the term 'cocktease' in there somewhere. I laughed. Like he was one to talk.

My robe was gathered in his tight fists on either side of me. I wondered briefly if it was in for an unsalvageable rip, like all of my other clothes. I didn't mind, though I did wonder about this 'seduction dream' that had made him buy it in the first place.

Smiling, I lifted his right hand to my lips, pressing them into his index finger. Our first blood bond. "Don't forget here," I said. Then I slid my lips to his inner forearm, the site of our second. "And lastly, here."

I nipped the tendons as they flexed under the stimulation.

He grunted again, growing restless beneath me. "Make your choice, then. Your assessment is complete."

I chuckled at his detached wording. I knew it helped him remove himself from the heat of the moment. He cherished his indifference and the cool rationality that came with it. I threatened it. Burned it all up. Poof.

Hell, yeah.

I snaked down his body, the panel of his silky robe opening with no resistance. I came to the hard washboard of his abdomen. He tensed beneath me in expectation. I licked along the valleys between the tight cluster of muscles.

Without warning, I lightly flicked the dagger over his bellybutton, nicking his dense flesh. Eric gasped. I don't know what he'd been expecting, but this clearly wasn't it. Blood quickly pooled in the wound, then ran over and caught perfectly in the tiny cup of his navel. Just as I'd hoped.

"I choose here." I sealed my mouth over his navel and sucked, tonguing softly into the little cup, lapping as it flowed.

Eric hissed with pleasure, his head falling back onto the pillow, laying himself completely open to me.

My cut hadn't been deep and he was already healing. The thimble's worth of his blood was more than enough. I already felt the pulse of his power coursing through me as I continued to lave attention on his trustingly exposed belly. His hands shot to my hair and tangled deeply into it, clutching my head to him as I drank.

"_Fuck_, you satisfy me," he muttered, his eyes closed, fangs bared.

His approval traveled directly through his blood. I could taste it. Spicy sweet and indefinably Eric. I sucked the last of his gift from his bellybutton, making sure it was all clean and pale again before I let go. God, it was like fifteen cups of coffee had leapt into my bloodstream. Half of my exhaustion disappeared, replaced by strength and energy and...yeah, okay...a smidge of lust.

Stupid, horndog vampire blood.

I looked up at its source. He was slightly arched up towards me. Eyes still closed. Hands still buried in my hair. Enjoying the sensation of himself slithering through my system.

"I fucking love feeling you this way," he said, his brow knitted with concentration as he navigated the train of his blood in mine.

I opened our bond wide and let him see everything. "Me too," I agreed. I crawled up his body and settled against him, sighing softly.

"Shall I show the other ways I love feeling you?"

I laughed and shook my head. "The bleeds, remember? Go to sleep."

"I don't want sleep. I want sex."

"I'll sex you up later," I argued pertly. "My heart breaks when you bleed."

He tapped my emotions and was surprised to find that his bleeds did indeed bother the hell outta me. He rubbed his hands soothingly along my arms.

"I've gone for several days without sleep before, Sookie," he comforted. "I'm in no danger."

"Humor me," I retorted. "Take a nap. I'll answer the door when my cousin gets here."

Irritation filled him. He didn't like that we were soon going to be disturbed. But he didn't whine.

"Very well," he conceded, kissing the top of my head beneath his chin. "Good day, lover."

I kissed his chest in answer. "See you soon."

E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S

I must have slept for an hour or so before the chimes woke me up. I sat up blearily and started when the plasma screen tv on the opposite wall sprang to life. It was filled with fifty-two inches of Eric's front porch, Alcide standing in the bright sun with Hadley draped sideways in his arms, dead asleep.

"Ding dong," I muttered to myself, slipping off of Eric and standing up. I straightened my mussed robe, retying the belt. Once marginally presentable, I made my way downstairs to welcome our guests.

"Hey," I greeted, holding the door wide for my friend.

Alcide's blinked in surprise. "How the hell did you get here already?" he asked as he stepped over the threshold. "Hadley said you guys left a minute before I showed up."

I shrugged and shocked myself with an easy lie. "Eric had a safehouse nearby. One of his SUVs had a travel coffin in it. I drove it the rest of the way." I quirked a brow at him. "Did you take the scenic route or something? You guys shoulda beat me, no problem."

To my immense relief, he looked down at Hadley guiltily. "She's a sweetie, this one," he muttered softly. "I stopped at a coffee shop and bought her breakfast. She's skin and bones." He moved his gaze to me and it hardened. "She also bears Eric's scent. Almost as much as you do."

Accusation simmered warmly between us.

I dipped into him gently and listened.

_Blood, just blood on Hadley Sookie is fuckin' saturated in sex, blood, sweat, happy, she smells happy no fear in her at all What the hell is going on?_ _More than a claim there's a bond never usually smell bonds in humans I've only ever smelled one before How could she be so stupid? What the hell has he managed to glamor her finally?_

I motioned for him to bring her into the living room where I'd seen a delicious-looking leather couch. He took my meaning and laid her out, pulling a merino blanket over her bare legs and short skirt. Hadley murmured in her sleep, then turned on her side, snuggling deep into the cushions. After making sure she was comfy, Alcide followed me into the kitchen. I'd never been in there before, so I started rummaging. Maybe Eric had stocked coffee or juice or something now that he had a human lover.

Bingo. Coffee and a coffeemaker. I set about making some brew, motioning for him to pull up a stool to the breakfast bar.

"What has she told you?" I asked.

"Not a hell of a lot," he replied dryly, watching me work. "She's too scared."

He let that set before adding, "What the hell did he do to her?"

I leveled him with my own stare. "Nothing," I answered. "Believe me, Eric isn't who you wanna be mad at."

"She can barely say his name, it spooks her so bad."

"Look," I said, locating two cups. "I love you both to pieces, so I'll be frank with you about her. Hadley, until three hours ago, belonged to the vampire queen Sophie Anne."

His brow went up. "The ex-queen? The one who's in the shit with the Authority?"

I nodded. Vamp news was supe news, after all. I wasn't surprised he already knew. "Hadley's been with her for years. She's kinda why I got tangled up with vampires, not that she knew it would happen."

The coffeepot percolated. After it dinged, I poured two steaming cups full.

"The queen kidnapped me from Eric. Don't," I stopped him before he spoke, "...ask me why. It's not important. The important thing is that I belong to Eric, she took me, he showed up and killed the shit outta her. Cream or sugar?"

"Both. Lots." _Snow white lots of sugar, I don't want a trace of brown_

"You got it." I murdered his coffee accordingly and slid it over to him. "Anyway, blah blah blah, Eric agreed to claim Hadley to protect her from the Authority, among other reasons. Because she's my kin, Eric gave his blood to her and swore her safety to me."

He took a sip. "Jesus fuckin' Christ," he muttered into his cup.

"Tell me about it."

He looked over the rim at me. "And you're all right?"

I smiled faintly and nodded. "Fine. Just tired."

"I mean about Eric. What the fuck, Sookie?" _Such a sweetheart should know better, just like Hadley, pretty girl, so soft scared, I like her, shouldn't like her, belongs to Eric now, Christ Alive what a fuckin' mess_

Ah. My smile felt even heavier. God, there was just too much to explain. "I know, I know," I said. "Look, I'll boil it down. I love him. I hated him forever and I fought with him about everything and I truly wanted to kill him, like, ninety-eight percent of the time, but..." I shrugged "...I'm in love with him. I am stupid, _stupid_ in love with him. The funny thing is? He's stupid in love with me, too."

_Vampire he's a vampire, cold-hearted bastard at that, doesn't love, can't love, Bill maybe, but not Eric, too hard, despises humans, but I don't know, sent me to protect Sookie in Jackson Why the fuck would he care? Maybe, doubt it, she seems pretty sure_

"I am sure," I replied with a kind look.

"Fuck!" he lowered his gaze instantly, hiding from my probe.

I bit my lip. "Sorry. I don't mean to pry. But I appreciate your worrying over me. You're sweet."

He snorted. "Yeah. 'm a fuckin' saint."

_Needed the money, feel guilty, I'm your friend, friends should help when they can, such a pretty thing standing there when I drove up, so scared, fire behind her, don't think about her, she's Eric's now, asshole has too many pretty women that fuck_

I chuckled and took a sip of my cup. "I'm glad you like her. She needs all the friends she can get."

"Goddammit, knock it off. Quit foolin' around in there." He tapped his head and scowled at me.

I held my free hand up in surrender. "Fine. But for the record, Eric has no interest in Hadley. If you, ya know..."

He eyed me darkly. "I won't take up with a blood whore, pardon my language. I refuse to watch any woman of mine feed that asshole and get his scent all over her." _Debbie lost her damn mind to V, couldn't watch Hadley bitten, couldn't watch her drink him, I don't care if he doesn't fuck her, he'll ruin her_

"Ruin her? What is this? A Jane Austen novel?"

"Whadd I say?"

"Sorry," I waved my hand again. "Jeez, calm down. I promise you, Eric isn't going to drink from her and she isn't going to drink from him." I felt my eyes turn chilly as I stared him down. "He is mine."

He snorted again. "It don't work that way, darlin'. Vamps claim people. People don't get to claim vamps."

I took another long sip, my eyes never leaving his. "You already know that we're bonded. We belong to each other. Nobody else."

"And you trust him to honor that, do you?"

"Yes," I answered simply. I supposed I could have gotten angry at his tone, but I found I couldn't blame him. Friends argued with you and called you a damn fool if they didn't like your choices. That was how you knew they cared.

He sighed heavily, slowly getting to his feet. "I gotta git movin'. I didn't tell the crew I was gonna be late."

I stood up and came around the bar. Before he could fend me off with some manly sidestep, I bear hugged him. He huffed sheepishly, caught, before letting his arms fold around me. I smiled against his flannel shirt.

"Thank you for helping my cousin. I'll be sure to sing your praises when she wakes up."

"Oh, don't you dare," he grunted. "Just tell her I said goodbye."

I squeezed him teasingly. "And that you loooooove her."

"I said shush. Git offa me, little girl."

He peeled me off and set me aside, but kept his hands on my shoulders. "Now you take extra-special fuckin' care, Sookie. Ima be mighty pissed if I hear you've been hurt because of this mess of yours."

I smiled with more energy that I'd felt all morning. "Cross my heart and hope to die."

"Goddammit," he muttered as he turned towards the entryway. "Whadd I _just say_?"


	23. Chapter 23

**A/N:** Dang, yo. I'm shocked at how many reviewers love/despise the Hadley/Alcide possibility. Veeeerrrry interesting. As usual, muchas smoochas to reviewers and lurkers alike. Eric's POV

I awoke several hours later.

I did not open my eyes. In the darkness of my room, I could feel the sun's presence outside as it dipped low on the horizon. Behind my lids, I concentrated on the energies of my women. Three bonds now hummed steadily within me. Pam. She was close to rising. In another few hours, she would emerge from the ground and return to me here in Shreveport, dirty and bitchy, no doubt. Hadley. She was in my home. My link to her was substantially weaker than the other two, but I could sense her sleeping mind beneath me on the first floor. She and the were had obviously arrived with no trouble. I wasn't pleased, exactly. I resented being tied to such an insipid creature, tainting my head with her ordinary emotions and her insignificant whereabouts. She was a perfect example of why I never shared my blood with humans. Their cerebral presence bored me. I planned to start erecting barriers around her bond in my mind, blocking out all but her location and her need for assistance. Everything else was a waste of my time.

The third bond pulsed hardest, sweetest, nearest.

The last woman shared my bed. My innermost sanctuary. A soft, warm, breathing woman.

Astonishing how many precedents had been set in the last few days.

I open my eyes and turned to my side to examine her sleeping form. She lay on her back, her face relaxed and lovely. Her hand shyly held mine, a gesture I found simultaneously modest and carnal. My necklace lay nestled in her cleavage, the dagger sheathed, ready to nick every inch of me and feed my greedy little lover. As usual, my dead heart squeezed at the sight of her. She still wore the white robe, which had loosened at the belt and fallen open at the side, giving me a dangerous eyeful of her plump breast, sleek ribcage and toned leg. It had taken me ages to find that robe. Pam had brought me over a hundred before I found the right combination of texture, color and pattern. When Sookie had tied it up and turned to me in the bathroom, I was suddenly back in Jackson, Sookie reading my memories and pushing me into bed. In my fantasy, she'd torn that robe off in her haste to give herself to me. She'd been mine.

She _was_ mine. She was now in _my_ bed, wearing _my_ gifts.

My fangs clicked.

Looking at my mate, I hungered for everything I saw. Food. Sex. Warmth. Love.

_Love._

Yet another precedent.

Silently, I slipped out of my own robe. Defying gravity, I vaulted and held myself slightly above her, only a few fingers holding me aloft from the mattress. I didn't wish to disturb her, but I needed her closer. Always closer. I flicked the other side of her robe open and tried not to growl at her naked body.

I vaguely noticed Herveaux's scent on the fabric, but my annoyance was quickly overrun by the scent of her beneath it.

Fae. Golden, glorious, trusting Fae. Sookie. My devilish angel.

I lowered as close as possible without touching her and breathed deeply. My cock sprang to life. My eyes clouded. My mind deserted me. My blood inside her taunted me, laughing with contentment now that it was where the rest of me ached to be. Jealousy tore me apart. To be that mouthful of blood right now, warm and nestled inside her. I stifled a groan of longing.

I couldn't take not touching her. It was wrong. So wrong. I needed her, any of her. I was going crazy being this close, just as much as I went crazy when she wasn't near.

I arched my neck that final inch and kissed her lips. The essence of sweet met my tongue. I flicked it out, sipping from her. She slept so soundly, she didn't respond. Her soft mouth didn't form a kiss. It gave way under my slight pressure, neither encouraging nor resisting me. The single inch of our contact soothed me slightly, but it wasn't enough.

I slid down to her throat, burying my face against her pulse. The chain of her necklace was cool against my cheek. Again, I inhaled and smothered another groan of pleasure. The fact that I would never identify what made her smell so intoxicating vexed me savagely. I was familiar with tens of thousands of scents. I could detect the slightest variations, including which country a dried stick of cinnamon had been harvested. Pollution, organic matter, animal pheromones, chemical compounds, even certain types of magic left identifiable trace in the air. There was nothing I had no reference for. Except Sookie. Her scent's unaccountability was rivaled only by its temptation. I hated its mystery. I fervently hoped I would never solve it.

Her nipples hardened in the cool air. Their lovely pink tips commanded me to suck them. I obeyed, teasing their sweet flesh with the lightest suction. Sookie made a little squeak of pleasure. Moving lower down her nudity, I kissed every inch before I reluctantly left it.

Yet _another_ precedent.

I had made more kisses in the last six days than I had in the last six hundred years. Vampires are not kissers by nature. Orally-fixated, perhaps, but we generally lacked the softness, patience and inclination needed for such a human activity. We bit. We tongued and we licked. But using our lips in such a chaste manner was rare. And while Sookie's skin demanded that I bite and tongue and lick her, I was astonished by my own heart's insistence that I cover her in thousands of kisses, with no digression into rougher contact.

Odd. Extremely odd.

But inescapable. The valley between her breasts beckoned. I lowered my head, kissing just below her dagger, following the line of her breastbone, my lips touching every millimeter until I reached her navel.

"Little siren," I accused into her stomach.

She murmured in her sleep, her lax form curving upwards slightly. Towards me. Responding to the rasp of my voice. And with that unconscious encouragement, my thirst exploded in urgency.

There was no time. I had no choice. I needed her. She was provoking me again and had no one to blame but herself. She'd given herself to me less than a week ago, demanded my fidelity and insisted I only feed with her. Now she was asleep, torturing me with my wish to let her rest, but also my need to slake this hunger that only she could satisfy.

This fucking conundrum again. Cherish Sookie. Devour Sookie.

I slid down several more inches, my kiss growing more fervent with each body part.

_Sleep_, I urged through our bond. _Stay in rest, my love. You need strength. _

I palmed her flawless thighs, spreading them wide. The suppleness of her inner legs and the ethereal scent of her sex made me growl low. I had done all I could, encouraging her to get the rest I knew she needed, but my needs were too great to ignore a second longer. I would not wait for her to awaken on her own.

As I gazed at my target, my heart paralyzed me, refusing my bite reflex, until I brushed my lips over her pulse point, paying homage with a kiss. With that, my love for Sookie was satisfied, and it allowed me to press my fangs against her skin and gently bite down on her inner thigh. They slipped into her flesh with ease. Siphoning such a large artery meant I only had to seal my mouth to her, no sucking required. Liquid Utopia filled me, ripping open my human memories of apples and blackberries and, of course, honey. A river of honey.

"Mmmmm...Eri...c," my angel whimpered above me, opening her thighs wider in invitation.

_Sleep_, I repeated softly to her. I refused to open my mouth and lose a single drop to speech. _I simply cannot wait, lover. I'm starving for you._

She moaned again, her chin tilting back as she arched into my feeding. "_Yes_," she sighed, her eyelids fluttering.

The unearthly fragrance of her arousal assaulted me. Her skin glowed brighter, a combination of her natural aura and my blood. Our bond whispered that she still slept. She was simply in a dream state, imagining our intimate act.

Lust tore through me and filled our bond, despite my efforts to keep it chained up. It rippled through her peaceful state and she moaned wantonly. My darkness hissed with pleasure, mocking my heart's softness and my cock's miserable solitude. Her blood was hot, but her love and pussy burned so much hotter. I thought I would be content with the first. Now it was paltry.

With my final mouthful, I blasted through her sleeping tranquility, allowing my ecstasy to meld with hers and forcing her to climax.

"Eric!" she moaned hotly, her unconscious body seizing with pleasure. "Oh, Eri..." I fucking loved my name in her mouth, even when it was drowsily misshapen.

Sealing her wound, I edged forward and lapped my dessert from her delicate folds as they pooled with desire. "Yes," I urged softly. "Always so ready for me, lover. It drives me mad."

More wetness coated my tongue and I groaned, not bothering to smother it.

Still hovering, I glided upward and positioned my hips directly above hers. "Sookie," I barely kissed into her mouth.

I pulled back to position myself, then slid a few precious inches into her molten heat. Her tight flesh worked hard to accommodate me, despite the wondrous slickness that welcomed me and pulled me deeper.

Her closed eyes screwed up tightly as her body widened to accept me. Her hands clutched my biceps, anchoring herself to our mating. She squeaked again, slowly rising from the depths of her slumber. I tried - _tried_ - to stop halfway, hoping that a shallow depth would satisfy my lust for her. I had planned to keep my lovemaking as soft and unobtrusive as possible, letting my love continue to rest. But it was useless. Once I'd entered her silky perfection, there was no such thing as halfway.

I buried myself to the hilt and grunted loudly in bliss.

Her closed eyes fluttered wildly. "Eric...so...good..."

"Forgive me," I whispered as I started to pump smoothly, our lips and hips the only points of contact. "I need inside you, lover. I need to feel you."

She hummed again, hearing me, but still not lucid. She hooked her calves around mine and tugged, pulling my body down until more of us touched. I resisted. I wished to leave her as unmolested as possible. She must have sensed this through the bond, because her lips made an adorable pucker of distaste and her hands grabbed my ass firmly and yanked downward.

I hissed, the motion forcing me deep and hard within her. "_Yessss_," my darkness snarled out loud.

With that, her eyes opened fully. She was awake; awake, bitten, and getting fucked by a monster who had no intention of stopping. I wordlessly begged for understanding as I continued to thrust hard into her addictive heat.

My angel, she looked up at me...and smiled. "You're no dream," she noted playfully. Her hands now gripped me with authority, sculpting my ass and guiding me as I stroked.

"No," I moaned in relief. "No dream. I needed you. Needed-,"

"Food," she interrupted, leaning up into me, kissing me sweetly as her body rocked with mine. "Sex."

"Everything," I corrected, finally letting my full weight rest in the cradle of her feminine curves and swells. "Needed everything."

"Then take," she offered, rubbing her cheeks into my stubble. "God, I love how you fuck me, baby."

Such vulgarity in such a pretty voice. I pinned her hips down roughly and began driving violently into her. "Come. Right now."

She arched into my savagery and sighed with pleasure. "Yes, Eric."

She came. Shivering and gasping and whispering my name, she came. I couldn't fucking bear it. This soft, mischievous little miracle of nature, I never knew when to expect simpering obedience or a knock-down, drag-out fight. And just as I was teetering on the brink of brutish insanity, she pushed me over the edge with kittenish compliance.

"Fucking _adore_ you," I swore at her, slamming home and flooding her with a torrent of come. She clutched my shoulders and sobbed softly, blooming under my release.

"Love you," she whispered feverishly into my throat, kissing into my straining muscles as euphoria took me.

We continued to move together, stealing every last ripple of pleasure from our union before collapsing back into bed.

I began to flip us so that she could rest on me, but she clamped her arms and legs around me stubbornly. "No," she said.

I settled on my elbows, lifting away and smirking down at her. "I'm too heavy."

"Says who?"

"A little telepath in Dallas," I replied wryly, kissing along her hairline. "She said I weighed a ton."

The little telepath trapped beneath me snorted and looked away ruefully. "Yeah, well. She said a lot of stuff she didn't mean."

"I doubt that," I continued my path to her ear, nibbling gently. "Indeed, she's pathologically honest."

She craned her head, sighing with pleasure as I teased her face with the softness of my lips and the sandpaper of my cheeks. "Okay, maybe she is, but give her a break. She was operating under a lot of misunderstandings."

She pushed me back at the shoulders and gave me a stern jut of her chin. "None of which you bothered to set straight."

I chuckled and rocked her gently. "You had only to ask. I would have gladly shown you how pleasurable my weight can be."

"Jesus Almighty," she rolled her eyes skyward. "Dirty old man."

I laughed and plastered myself to her, holding back just enough not to crush her. "Still think I'm not heavy?"

She shocked me and hummed gratefully, her hand in my hair, guiding my head to rest in the hollow next to hers. "No. You're just right."

With that, she closed her eyes and snuggled deep under me, as though I were her favorite blanket. Needing no air, I burrowed my face into her hair and throat, caging her in with my broader, longer frame.

"Still sleepy," she murmured, her nose buried against the crook of my neck.

I nodded, the strands of her hair flirting with my stubble. "Then sleep," I answered.

"Are you going to sleep, too?"

"No. I have risen for the night."

She paused. "Will you stay with me? Just for a minute?"

I kissed her hair. Fuck, there wasn't a single inch of her I hadn't tasted. "Yes," I said simply. "I'll be generous and give you five."

She snickered lightly and planted her own kiss on my collarbone. "I'll be up soon," she promised, then added softly, "Play nice with Hadley."

"She also sleeps," I informed her with less humor. "If she awakens before you, I'll show her to the kitchen and a guestroom."

Sookie butted her forehead lovingly against my shoulder. "Thank you again."

"I wish you to be happy."

"I am," she yawned girlishly. "Alcide likes her. A lot."

"He is welcome to her."

"Hey," she bit me lightly, arousing me all over again. "She's not some whore you can pass around."

I craned my neck to one side, straining into her bite. "She has behaved as a whore, but no matter. I will not share her with vampires, nor will I prevent her from choosing other men. She may do as she pleases." I fastened my human teeth to her throat, imprinting her skin with my bite radius. "It is Sookie who is forbidden any man's bed but mine."

She in turn craned her neck into my mouth. "So bossy," she teased.

I growled and shoved her deeper into the mattress, my lighthearted mood vanishing. "Say it."

"Make me," she defied.

I bit down on her again, harder, but without injury. "Only me," I snarled under her ear. "_Say it._"

She hummed with pleasure and rubbed her naked body playfully along mine. "Mmmmm...so sleeeepy."

"Tell me now or I'll kill any man who speaks to you."

She giggled at my very sincere threat. "What if I decide to run away with Pam? She's not a man."

"_Sookie._"

"Fine," she rolled her eyes. "Just you." She kissed my left cheek and pulled back. "Only you." She kissed my right. "Your bed." Kiss to my chin. "Your love." Kiss on my nose. "Sookie is Eric's. Mind, body and soul."

"And Light."

My greed for everything made her sigh with feigned resignation. "And Light. Everything I am is yours."

At last, I relaxed and allowed my face to soften as she caressed it with hers. "Rest now," I ordered softly. "Before you stir me up again."

Denial rose hotly within her and I stopped her lips with my own to silence her indignation. "You _always_ stir me," I clarified. "Go to sleep before you force me to act on it."

She huffed softly, but pressed her mouth shut.

I nodded and resumed my caging vigil above her. "I will stay until you do."

E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S

My fingers flew across my laptop as I caught up with emails.

Many things needed my attention. I was pleased that Sookie had fallen asleep almost instantly, her fierce embrace quickly slackening until she lay unconscious beneath me. I hated to leave her, but there was much to do, a great deal of it unpleasant. First and foremost, I wrote to the Authority. I was brief, informing them that Hadley Stackhouse, pet to the queen and cousin to my bonded, was in my custody. I explained that the pet had bravely but foolishly taken vampire justice into her own hands to save innocent people from the queen's subversive plans. I kept my tone light and uninterested, as if such skirmishes didn't concern me. I also insinuated that since Sophie Anne was a liability to our kind and no longer a queen, Hadley's deed was of no serious import.

After a moment's hesitation, I blithely admitted to claiming her. Again, I painted myself a whimsical possessor, noting that her family tie to my bonded and their similarity in taste had swayed my interest. I offered them full access to her for questioning, a right I knew they would take anyway, but made it clear that I would not tolerate unnecessary damage to her.

_It would distress my bonded human_, I wrote, _and to be frank, I dislike Hadley's taste when she is under duress. It is acidic. _

I signed off as their humble servant.

The next email was to my estate lawyer, requesting that she locate several homes in the Shreveport and Bon Temps areas under the price of $75,000. Hadley had been living a charmed life with the queen, but she was not welcome in my home, nor did I get the sense that she wanted such an arrangement. She and her child would have their own residence. She would also be issued employment. I had yet to decide if I wanted her working in Fangtasia so I could monitor her, or if I could position her in one of my other, nonvampiric bars in Shreveport. I would discuss it with Pam.

Speaking of which.

I tilted my head. The sun was setting outside. Pam would be up in moments. I noted with some surprise that I had little interest in going outside to watch the sunset. It was a sight I'd enjoyed very much as a human, and a sight I astounded at now, but without Sookie folded up against me, her loose hair teasing the skin of my neck, the inclination was weak.

Hm.

Instead, I closed my laptop and settled back into my chair, gazing idly at another mystery that needed my attention.

Sookie's ancient book sat on the corner of my desk. I'd brought it down with me, taking it from where Sookie had deposited it on the chair next to my bed. It was old, possibly as old as me. It's dusty, leathery scent suggested it was not magical in origin. It had been bound the old-fashioned way, with twine and ink and laborious attention to detail. I moved my computer and slid the book over, opening the first page.

Sookie had been right. Its language would be difficult for any human who wasn't schooled in antique languages or any vampire made after the Dark Ages. I skimmed several sections, zeroing in on the passages describing Sookie's Light. With my insider knowledge, it was easy to discern that Sookie had been correct about our Fae bonding. Not that I had doubted her. I smiled as the passage described the permanent state of such a bond. Apparently, Faes were every bit as possessive and jealous as vampires when it came to choosing a mate.

The description of Radia also captured my interest.

Ah. It seemed Sookie had given me more than just the ability to day walk. She'd also inadvertently trusted me with this particular kind of Light.

_Radia exchanged from Fae to Fae_  
_Mortalities forge into One_

My brow furrowed. Strange. From what I understood, Faes were not mortal. They lived forever, like us. And what did it mean when the Fae was betrothed to a non-Fae? Sookie's Radia had not been an exchange, but a gift. I had given no Light in return. My life force - mortality, as they coined - only resided in her in the form of my blood.

I leaned back and considered. Perhaps the passage was referring to the true death for the Fae, that their eventual end would become intertwined with their mate's. When one died of injury (as we all would one day), their mate, regardless of their health or situation, died with them. I marveled at such an exchange. Fae bonds must be rare indeed, or an immortal to entrust such a weakness to another.

I shot up in my chair. No. Not possible. _Unthinkable._

_Sookie. _

Jesus fucking Christ.

Her Radia pulsed inside me. It would do so until the day I met the true death. Did that mean that Sookie's mortality was now forged with mine? Was she to live and die by my side, whether I lived another week or another thousand years?

Fear, awe and hope crashed through my skull. It wasn't possible. My death was my own. The idea that Sookie would perish should I be staked, or silvered, or decapitated by any number of enemies, left me gasping uselessly for air.

But there was the other extreme. Sookie could live indefinitely, her Radia nurtured by my inability to die naturally, just as if she'd chosen a Fae mate. She could stay with me. Always. I would never suffer the agony of watching her grow old and die in the meager amount of years humans occupied.

Another thousand years of Sookie.

My fangs ran out. I slammed into our bond and clung to it with all of my might. Her sleeping mind hugged me back, pliant and calm and unaware of my panic.

I had to protect her with everything I was. I had to protect myself, as they were no longer mutually exclusive.

Fuck, I needed to think. I needed to _think_! I needed-

A knock of my door had me growling loudly. I heard a gasp behind the wood panel and the intake of a breath. "Sheriff Northman? Are you in there?"

_Hadley._

"Enter!"

A small squeak of fear. The door opened slightly and her blonde head poked through. "Can...can I talk to you? Please?"

"I said enter, girl."

Quivering, she slid through the slender crack and stepped in, her head dipped low and submissive. "I...wanted to thank you again. For taking me on and all? I really apprec-,"

"You're welcome," I cut in dismissively. "There is food in the kitchen. Sookie will wake shortly. Leave me. I have work."

She shook her head and took an audacious step closer. "I need to tell you something first."

Fuck. I didn't have time to spare for this. "You may fuck the werewolf, if that is your concern. Though, I will have to bite you before the Authority arrives to question you. Herveaux has no say in that."

Her head shot up and her eyes nearly popped from her head. "What? No! Jesus Pleasus, why would you-? No, this isn't about him. Or the Authority."

I exhaled in irritation. "Spit it out, pet. I'm getting impatient."

With a bravery that clearly ran in the family, she sat in the chair across my desk, twisting her rings and biting her lip with worry.

"This is about Hunter. I need to tell you about my son."


	24. Chapter 24

**A/N: **Aaaaaaand, here we go with the next update. Who seriously can't wait for the 26th? I'm ready to have a stroke. Sookie's POV**  
**

When I woke up an hour later, Eric was still very much with me, even though I was alone.

As I stretched out across his ridiculously comfy bed, I could feel the pulse of his mind, the pleasant burn of his bite on my thigh, and the ghost of his hips lunging between mine.

"Mmmm..." I purred out loud, stroking our bond with lazy approval. "Yummy."

I know he couldn't hear me, but he could damn well feel me, just as I felt him. I peppered him with my sense of feeling spoiled and fucked beyond anything proper and decent. He registered my wakefulness, and I smiled at the momentary break in his otherwise somber concentration as I ran my mental hands all over him. He was equal parts of pleasure and rebuke, allowing my fondling, but annoyed that I was distracting him. I laughed and shut it down. Fine. Killjoy.

I got up and took an excursion into his Narnia-esque closet, so chock full of clothes that a medieval forest full of fawns could easily have existed towards the back. There was one panel in particular that stood out. He'd shown it to me yesterday, a section he'd filled with size six women's clothes. It was a square of bright and breezy in an ocean of black and gray. Sundresses, cute shorts, delicate tops, sandals and feminine sneakers. Dozens of everything, nothing darker than turquoise.

I clucked my tongue, totally thrown for a loop.

If you had asked me two weeks ago, I would have said Eric Northman would have _insisted_ on dressing me up like a vampy little doll, should he manage to get his hands on me. Black leather, red lace, garters and scandalous hems, lines that pushed up boobs and sucked in tummies. You couldn't throw a rock without hitting those fashions at Fangtasia. Just look at Pam. Her personal tastes might run towards the pastel to the downright tweenie, but in Eric's presence, she was freakin' Elvira.

I took a pair of jean shorts and a peach tank top off the shelves. The designers were way out of my price range, but the style was all me.

Eric. He'd gone and flabbergasted me again.

I quickly found an underwear drawer (I chose a sexy lace set) and got dressed. Looking at myself in a full-length mirror, it was clear that Eric didn't want some S&M Barbie. He wanted me. He wanted to provide and care for me, not chip and mold me into into Pam's bouncer persona. Remembering something, I did a quick scan of the hangers and inside the drawers. Sure enough. Eric had once said that he thought the color red suited me very well. I huffed in befuddlement. Aside from a few sets of underwear, there wasn't a single stitch of red material anywhere in the trove. As much as he liked it, I didn't wear it, so he hadn't bought so much as a belt in that color.

I put on a pair of little white tennis shoes and made a decision.

Soon, in the very near future, I was going to go out and buy the slinkiest, sexiest, Chase-Me-Catch-Me-Fuck-Me red dress that Louisiana ever saw. I'd wear my slutty red lipstick and make damn sure all of it transferred to Eric by the end of that night. I'd buy red heels that doubled for ice picks. I'd choose underwear that turned my calculating vampire tycoon into a pawing, mauling mess of animal lust. If he thought he was going to surprise me with his kindness and wish for me to be myself, then he was in for a curveball of his own. Plans made, I sauntered into the bathroom and made sure I looked presentable before I wandered downstairs.

I dove back into his closet long enough to pick a dress and fresh undies for Hadley as well. She'd probably kill for a shower and clean clothes right about now.

I heard muted talking coming from the library as I walked down the dark hallway.

Hadley was speaking. Her voice sounded stronger than it had at the queen's mansion. Tired, but stronger. I could feel Eric's rapt attention on her as I opened the door, the dress and underwear folded up in my hand.

"Hey guys."

They turned in unison to my voice.

I caught a brief glimpse of Eric behind his desk before he was suddenly in front of me. He grabbed me, lifted me up and crushed my lips in a hard, claiming kiss. It wasn't deep and it wasn't slow. It was over before I had the chance to respond with anything more than a squeak of surprise. He pulled back, his face serious but his mind throbbing with the thrill of just seeing me. Eric Northman didn't do anything half-assed, even hello kisses.

"Hi," I whispered, feeling almost shy at such an eager reception.

"Hi," he echoed, still clutching me to him.

I gave him an embarrassed smile and disentangled from his arms. Ladies didn't grope their beaus in front of company. Eric slackened his hold, but didn't release me.

"Did you already know?" he asked quietly.

I frowned. "Know what?"

He turned slightly and allowed us a sideways view of Hadley. She sat in one of his chairs opposite his desk. Alcide was right, she was skin and bones. Worse than that, the dark circles under her eyes and gauntness of her cheeks made my pretty cousin look almost skeletal. Given that she'd had a mouthful of vampire blood yesterday, her appearance was as baffling as it was sad.

Eric nudged his chin her way, then looked at me. "About Hunter. Did you know the child was also a telepath?"

My eyes rounded and I gazed at Hadley in wonder. Good gracious. She'd told him. She'd told a big, scary vampire about her delicious, mind-reading little boy. I sputtered, but answered. "Yes, I knew. Hadley asked me to talk to him. He's got a lot of skill, even for a kid."

Eric trapped my chin and returned my eyes to him. He wasn't angry, but he wanted my attention. "And you said nothing to me?"

"Not a peep," I answered honestly. "It's not my secret to tell. Before yesterday, I thought Hadley had taken him into hiding. I had no reason to think you'd end up responsible for him."

His eyes narrowed. "You're my bonded. You should have disclosed this to me, regardless of his status."

"We've been together a week, babe. I've had other things on my mind. Plus," I eyed him reprovingly, "You didn't give me any warning before you claimed Hadley and Hunter. I suggest you pop the hood before you buy the car next time."

Annoyed, but knowing a winning argument when he heard it, he let me go and wandered back to his desk. I went to Hadley and gave her an awkward, seated hug as I handed her the clothes.

"I'm glad you told him," I said as I pulled back and stroked her hair.

She gave a watery smile and shrugged. "I'm so tired, Sook. I know I don't deserve any sympathy. I made my bed. But," she gestured weakly, "He's just a baby. Social Services took him back to his daddy. There's no one to protect him. And he's just...well, he's so much like you at that age. I'm terrified another vamp will come along and scoop him up."

I bit my lips, giving her sympathy anyway.

Eric arched a brow, watching us behind tented fingers. "In what way is he like Sookie?"

I sighed knowingly. "She means he just repeats everything he hears," I tapped my head, meaning everyone's thoughts. "People are afraid of him. Probably think he's a freak. Or worse." I looked at Hadley to see if she agreed and missed the dark look of anger that passed over Eric's face.

Hadley nodded. "Everything. What I'm thinking. What his daddy's thinking. Bank tellers, grocery clerks, other kids at school. He just..." she gestured again, "...just anything. 'Why do you hate your husband? What does blowjob mean? Why are you praying to God to kill gays? Why did your daddy hit your momma with a bat and say it was a car accident? Why why why?'"

I nodded throughout. God knows I'd heard it all, too.

Eric's mood shifted. I blinked and focused on his mind. I couldn't really tell how he was feeling. Something complicated and morose had just settled on him, but it was hard to pin down.

I looked at him. "What is it?"

He hadn't moved a muscle. "This was your experience as well?"

"Sure. I didn't know any better. It took me ages to realize other people couldn't hear outside thoughts. Took me even longer to learn to block them out."

Solace flooded me. I smiled at him as a thank-you. "It was a long time ago."

His eyes flicked to Hadley. "Was the queen aware of his gift?"

She shook her head hard. "No. Hunter was a baby when I took up with her. By the time he could talk, I'd already seen her interest in my stories about Sookie. It frightened me, so I kept my mouth shut."

"So you only sold out one family member, then."

"Eric!" I rebuked sharply.

Hadley put her hand on my knee. "No, Sook. It's fine. More than fine, it's true." She held her head up and looked at Eric squarely across the desk. "I was poor and desperate and stupid, Sheriff," she accepted. "When Sophie Anne took me in, I had no understanding of the vampire world, or supes of any kind. And she was kind to me. She fed me nice food, never bit me by force, and she listened when I told her about my family."

She dropped her head, then turned to me, aching to make herself understood. "You gotta believe me, Sook. I told her about my little family. Jason's football days and endless girlfriends, how Gran's pies had no equal in five counties, how sad we were as kids when your folks passed away. When I mentioned you, I never in a million years thought it was a big deal. I even think I was laughing when I told her how nobody could pull a fast one on you, cuz you'd know in a second if they were lyin'."

I gave her a soft smile. It was true. I'd been an inside joke in Bon Temps for twenty years. There wasn't a wife in town who hadn't threatened their hubbys with me, if they suspected he was a cheatin' dog.

"_How 'bout if I drag you over to the Stackhouse girl?_" they'd shout at their riled men. "_Think she'll say you've been playing cards all night? Or is she gonna say you've been with that whore CindyAnn?_"

I put my hand over hers on my knee. "It doesn't matter, sweetie," I said sincerely. "God knows I've pulled a few boners with these vamps. The important thing is to figure out where we go from here."

Eric rumbled in agreement. "Did the queen tell anyone else about Sookie's Fae traits, pet?"

I scowled at his nickname, but he and Hadley ignored me as she shook her head. "Never. She was way too interested in Sookie for herself. Her closest adviser was Bill, and she didn't give him any details. Just that she wanted more information."

He mulled this over.

"Does anyone in Hunter's family have ties in the supe community?"

She shook her head again. "Just me."

He rumbled again. "Then his father and immediate kin are unaware of his value or what he is?"

She nodded, biting her lip in fear for her 'valuable' son. "They've got no clue. Just that he's peculiar."

Eric bared his blunt teeth in anger at the description. Knowing he was equating the word to me, I sent out a soft caress through our bond, calming him. Hadley was perfectly right. Hunter was peculiar. _I_ was peculiar. The whole damn world had gone peculiar.

"So what now?" I appealed to his strategic nature.

He slouched further into his leather chair and considered. "What are your legal claims to the boy?"

Hadley sighed, ashamed. "One supervised visit every other week. After I pulled him out of daycare a few months ago, the court took away my weekends. That, plus no residence and no claimable income, they deemed me unfit to be alone with him."

My heart ached for my kin. Stupid though she may have been in the past, she loved her son and understood better than anyone the danger he was in if the wrong people put two and two together. His yummy little bloodstream would be sold to the highest vampire bidder in a matter of hours.

Eric also knew this. I could feel the highly-oiled wheels of his mind scrolling quickly. At length, he spoke. "You work for me now. I will sort out some appropriate employment, but as of this evening, you're is on my payroll. A house will be purchased in your name. You will live there and create a child-friendly environment, suitable for visits with your son. My lawyer will take over your case. He will petition for your rights to be reinstated and push for you to eventually gain sole custody."

Hadley's mouth fell open. As did mine.

"You...Sheriff, that's too much. I couldn't possibly repay you..."

Eric waved his hand to cut her off. "This is much larger than you, girl. I cannot allow a Fae relative of Sookie's to be without protection. His exposure and capture would endanger her, as well." He looked at her meaningfully. "The child knows of Sookie's powers, does he not?"

Wide-eyed, Hadley nodded.

He dipped his chin. "Then you understand. The sooner I have him in my sphere, the better."

"You won't hurt him?"

Her quivering voice made his lip curl, insulted. "I do not desire your offspring, pet. I'm bound to Sookie. She is everything I want. Hunter's blood has no appeal for me. What I want is containment. We will work with Hunter to make sure he is not a liability to himself or his aunt. Since you are mine, you _will_ comply with my plan."

I had turned several shades of pleased and jealous red as he spoke. Eric had just announced our bond to another person and it was thrilling to hear, but at the same time, he'd just claimed another woman in front of me. A claim of necessity as it may be, it still got my hackles up. I must have been emitting as much, because Eric's amusement filtered back to me, his mind stroking and soothing me as he continued to eye Hadley with nothing but cold evaluation. I bit back my annoyance. His claim to her was nothing, just window-dressing to keep the Authority from ripping her head off. I needed to remember that.

Speaking of which. "What about the Authority?" I asked.

Eric's eyes swept to mine. Their frost melted into warm lagoons. It was crazy how without even moving, he could change so drastically.

"I have written them with our story." He reached over to his printer and plucked a piece of paper from the tray. He handed it to Hadley. "You will read what I've told them and memorize your part in it." He leaned forward, catching her eyes in that icy glare again. "Be aware, I will glamor you this evening. There's no point lying to them if they can just reach into your mind and take the truth."

Hadley gasped. My chest tightened with fear and I opened my mouth to object, but stopped. What could I say? He was right, there was no point. I often forgot that everyone else had to worry about that little vamp trick. I guess that was one good thing we never had to worry about with Hunter. If he was like me, glamoring would never be an issue.

I squeezed her hand. "It'll be okay," I consoled her.

"Jesus," she mumbled. "I guess. So," she looked at Eric uncertainly. "You need to bite and glamor me before I talk to them?"

He barely nodded an inch.

She exhaled shakily. "When are they comin'?"

"I do not know. With the death of a monarch, I imagine we have little time. We will go to Fangtasia this evening. I assume they will show themselves there."

She took another breath and rose from her chair. She seemed to notice for the first time that I'd handed her some fresh clothes.

"Mind if I shower first?" she asked him.

He gestured out the door. "Second floor, third door on the left. A guestroom has been readied for you. You'll find a bathroom en suite."

She nodded. I stood up and hugged her again. "This is gonna work," I reassured her. "Nobody knows any of this except us. We've just gotta keep our heads together."

Shivering against me, she pulled back and smiled brokenly. "I love you a million animal crackers, Sook."

I smiled back at our old childhood game. "I love you a million Oreos, Had."

With our silly devotion reaffirmed, she stepped back and headed out the door.

As usual, the third person was barely out of the room before Eric was beside me, his forbidding façade cast off, warmth and demand pouring from his eyes and fingertips as they traced my bare arms. I pushed him back until he was partially seated on his desk, then stood between his legs and just buried myself into his delightfully warm torso. God, I never realized how much I liked touching a warm man without the contact amplifying his thoughts. It had always been one or the other; warm man with thoughts or cold vampire with silence.

Eric was a blessed combination of the two. Warm, loving silence.

I sighed into his chest as he trapped me in his arms and rained kisses into my hair.

"God, what a mess," I muttered into him.

His hands cupped my head, his fingers sliding and massaging along my scalp and oh, God did that feel good.

His mind shrugged indifferently. "It's a problem. We'll solve it."

"I guess."

His t-shirt felt so soft under my cheek, I nuzzled into it, enjoying the sensation. A quiet purr rose from his ribcage and I chuckled.

"What?" he asked, the sound continuing even as he spoke. Interesting.

I stroked along the inverted triangle of his back. "You, that's what. Whoever knew that Eric Northman could be such a cuddle bug?"

"Ridiculous term," he dismissed out-of-hand. "Touching you pleases me. That's all."

"Uh-huh," I replied dryly. "I've never seen _any_ man leap out of his chair when his girl enters the room, never mind the scariest vampire this side of the Mississipp."

"Perhaps you should watch your brass, lover, if I'm such a scary vamp."

"Psht," I giggled, snuggling even closer. "You love my brass. Teddybear." I added for good measure.

There is was again. That ancient amusement of his - the one that no one else seemed able to rouse - danced through his mind.

I grinned into his shirt. A long time ago, Hugo had said that it was a real ego trip knowing that we were desired by something so powerful as an old vampire. While I agreed completely (hell, it was exhilarating being desired by such a formidable creature), I found it just as thrilling to know that I made Eric laugh. I mean, honestly. How many things were still funny after a thousand years? Slapstick and sarcasm and dirty sex jokes, surely they get boring and repetitive, no matter what century you're currently trudging through. Listening to his rumble and his brain as they vibrated with humor, I gloried in the fact that as long as I smart-mouthed my scary vampire at every opportunity, he would always smile for me.

We continued to touch each other lazily, enjoying the brief moment of solitude before Hadley reappeared and the world butted in on us again.

"We have another matter to address," Eric murmured against my ear.

Lost in him, I was considering pushing him farther onto the desk so I could straddle him. "Ugh," I pulled a face. "Will it involve talking?"

I nipped along his throat and he tipped his head back in allowance. "Obviously."

"Then no," I denied flatly, straining up to nip his chin. "No deal."

"It's important," he smirked and leaned into my mouth, enjoying my little bites and licks.

"So's this," I countered. I loved the sandy color of his facial hair as I rubbed my lips across it. Most men, even other blondes like Jason, had dark stubble. Everything about Eric was pale as snow. I dragged my teeth over it in appreciation.

"Tease," he gruffed harshly, unable to stop his death by a thousand nibbles.

"Crybaby," I retorted.

He cupped my face and dragged me out of his throat. Once back, he swooped in and launched his own offense, kissing and biting my lips in turn.

Aw, cute. He wanted a win.

I caved and gave it to him, going limp in his hands and soft against his mouth, returning his kiss like the sweet angel he seemed to think I was.

When he pulled away, he was wearing the Sookie Smile.

"You delight me," he said simply.

I grinned back. "Back atcha."

He turned his head to the side and jutted his chin. I followed it, seeing my tome on the corner of his desk. My face still trapped in his palms, I raised my brow. "Find anything interesting?"

He nodded, his hands slipping to my throat. "Sookie," he rasped. "I need to know if it's possible for you to summon your kin." He pulled me close again, his lips unable to leave mine alone, even for thirty seconds. "I want some answers, lover."


	25. Chapter 25

**A/N:** OMG, so how many people have watched the first two eps more times than is healthy? Yeeeeah, I've got both hands up, here. Eric's POV

Against the wet drag of my demanding mouth, Sookie promised she would try to summon Claudine at dawn. Satisfied, I settled my lips to hers and pulled her into a long, groping kiss that did not end until a soft knock on the door interrupted us.

"Damn," Sookie muttered as she retreated from her perch between my legs. The reluctant slide of her palms over my thighs as she moved away was extremely gratifying.

Licking away the last of her taste, I grunted for Hadley to reenter. The pet walked into the room, fresh and resolute. She was wearing the clothes my lover had given her, their figures similar enough to share, but Hadley's lacking that extra something that gilded Sookie's movements with pixie-like grace.

Had I seen Hadley before I'd seen Sookie, I would have understood the queen's interest in this girl. She was sweet. She smelled soft and pliable. She would have made any vampire a worthy trophy. Alas, she was a pale comparison when in the same room with her cousin.

Sookie smiled at her, then turned to me.

"I'm gonna..." she jutted her chin to the door, "...go make Hadley and I some dinner before we go. Are you two okay to do this stuff without me?"

She did not wish to witness my bite to Hadley, or my glamoring of her. She knew they meant nothing, yet I sensed they still bothered her. I took her hand and dragged it to my lips.

"We won't be long," I assured her.

Hadley stiffened at the prospect of being alone with me, but said nothing. She knew better than to object. Sookie nodded, then headed for the door.

"Grilled cheese?" she asked her cousin.

Hadley pulled her lips tightly over her teeth. "More cheese than bread," she answered. The girls scoffed together. Apparently, this was the standard reply to that question.

Once Sookie had disappeared, I quickly set about my task. I took Hadley's gaze into my own and dragged her into my will. I explained our cover story. She repeated it back. I temporarily erased her knowledge of her son's and her cousin's Fae abilities. She blinked and asked me what I was talking about. Excellent. I told her that she was working for me from now on, that her son was her only priority now, that her sole purpose in life was to provide for him and keep him safe. She nodded mutely. I paused, then added one final command.

"You will consider a romantic relationship with Alcide Herveaux," I said. "You will consider the fact that his is a good man. He is a supe, and can protect your child. He is loyal. He will not betray or hurt you in any way."

Hesitation skittered in her eyes.

"He _is_ good," she repeated. "Too good for me."

I tightened my reigns on her, smothering her poor self-esteem with my will. "You _will_ heed me, pet," I ordered. "For the sake of your son, for the sake of my lover, you will _make_ yourself worthy of a decent, hard-working mate. I will not tolerate your weakness and let you endanger them by getting involved with another lowlife."

Sookie would not have approved, but I didn't care. I had no patience to let this opportunity develop naturally, nor did I did I plan to suffer that were's presence around my bonded when he'd shown interest in her in the past. If Sookie was right and he had an inclination towards another Stackhouse woman, then I would do all in my power to put her in his path. Not that I gave much of a fuck, but from what I could tell, the two seemed fairly well matched. And I knew from the were community that Herveaux liked children, but refused to sire any of his own for fear of passing his wolf genes to innocents.

Weres of all kinds were prolific breeders. It must have chaffed Herveaux greatly to stifle that instinct.

Hadley seemed an ideal mate. She already had an offspring. One that was not a were, but required protection nonetheless. The wolf's protective nature would no doubt kick in. I imagined that all of this would channel his interest away from Sookie and towards a more desirable pairing.

I continued to stare Hadley down. "Tell me your thoughts of him."

She smiled wanly. "He's nice," she said softly. "He seems real fond of Sookie."

I bit down my hiss. Fucking interloping werewolf. "Tomorrow, you will call him. You will thank him for his help. You will ask to see him again."

A blush crept to her cheeks. "Like a date?"

I was dangerously close to commanding her to seduce him. To lure him into bed with every wile I knew a Stackhouse woman possessed. If she shared a single blood cell with Sookie, it would come as naturally as breathing. As I seethed, I felt the cool pluck of curiosity in my mind.

From the kitchen, Sookie could feel my anger. She was pressing herself into me, checking if I was all right, stroking me with reassurance.

I pulled back from my jealousy.

"Correct," I agreed.

"And then what?" she asked.

"Talk to him," I hedged considerably. "Just talk to him."

My mind settled. At the other end of my house, Sookie felt pleased with this and went back to her business.

I settled back and crooked my finger. It was time for the final chore. "Come here."

She rose and came to me instantly.

"Turn your head."

The cream of her skin was exposed to me. Just another mortal, easily taken.

"For Sookie," I growled at the pet. "Only for Sookie."

I leaned forward and bit. My lips pulled back in distaste. My fangs fought to retract, but I forced them deeper into her throat. Hadley whimpered, but held still. Her blood pooled quickly in my mouth. My tongue sought refuge at the back of my throat, desperate to escape the base metal taste. I pulled away immediately, grabbing my waste bin and spitting her out. Hadley quickly put her hand over the wound, pressing down to staunch the flow. Normally, I would swipe the wound myself, letting the coagulant nature of my saliva seal it. But I couldn't bear the thought.

I spat again. As the residual taste of her clung to my mouth, I tried desperately to detect Sookie's essence in her shared DNA. Perhaps it would lessen the bitterness, the unpalatability of purely human blood. My taste buds fought savagely to find her in there. But aside from the pathetic genetic similarity, there was none of Sookie's magic in this girl. Where Sookie was golden honey, this girl - like everyone else - had become lead poisoning.

With a final expulsion into the trash, I shoved the bin to the floor and waved her out of her trance. Her gaze cleared and she eyed me wearily.

"Are we good?" she asked, still holding her throat.

I nodded. "Go to the kitchen. Eat. I'll join you both shortly."

She nodded and left without a word.

I stood for a moment more, amazed. I had tasted that girl before. At the queen's palace, I'd drunk from her throat with gusto, her fear and royal protection making her extra tasty. Her blood had been excellent. Not the best I'd ever had, but certainly appetizing.

But now?

I curled my tongue around the last stubborn drops and spat again, hitting the bin with perfect accuracy.

Again, Sookie had ruined me.

Another reason why losing her was unacceptable. If I didn't mourn to death, I would starve to death.

Moving behind my desk, I put Sookie's tome in a lock box before making my way to the kitchen where my little fairy would be munching happily on her human meal. I needed her right now. Even with the taste of toast and melted cheese on her lips, I knew her kiss was the answer to my vampiric indigestion.

E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S

My phone rang twice before I picked up. Sookie sat next me as we sped down the highway towards Fangtasia. Hadley sat in the back, her head pressed into the window as she watched the dark road whiz by.

"Northman."

"It's me," Pam answered, sounding as pissed as I imagined she would be.

"Where are you?"

"Heading back. The mansion is a cinder block. There were two vans out in front when I drove by."

"The Authority?"

"No, those _Extreme Makeover_ blowhards."

"Darling, you know I hate it when we fight."

"Of course the Authority," she replied. "Where are you, so I know where to come get my huge apology present you're going to give me for sleeping in a swamp?"

"The bar. Drive there, shower and get your ass on the door. When the Authority shows up, we'll be nothing but smiles."

"Huge, _shiny_ present," she repeated, and hung up.

I flipped my phone closed and pocketed it. In my rearview mirror, I could see my mark on Hadley's neck as she craned to the side. She was a thousand miles away. Only when I killed the engine in my parking lot did she seem to come back to the moment. I opened my door and zipped to Sookie's, opening it and offering my hand before she could object. She chuckled as she accepted it. Since the car had only two doors, I offered my hand to Hadley as well as she disentangled herself from the backseat. Once inside, I escorted them through the slim throng of patrons (it was still too early for most of my clientele) and into my office. I noticed that a new desk and overstuffed leather sofa had replaced the furniture I'd smashed the night before. Since Pam and I hadn't ordered them, I assumed Ginger had shown more administrative initiative than I would have thought possible.

I took Hadley lightly by the shoulders. Sookie would want me to handle her gently from now on. "Have you any experience as a waitress or a bartender?"

"Uh, yeah. A little," she answered. "I was working in a bar when the queen found me."

I nodded. This was useful. "Then that is what you'll do for the rest of the evening. I'll find you more appropriate work in the future, but tonight I want the Authority to see that we have nothing to hide." I eyed her pretty linen sundress. "Pam will provide you with more fitting attire when she arrives."

Hadley looked down at herself as though she'd done something wrong. I rolled my eyes slightly and softened. "You are lovely, pet. It's just branding."

Sookie stood silently to the side of us.

I nudged Hadley back out into the public area and behind the bar where a young vampire employee of mine was mixing a dirty martini. Stroking her bare arms softly, I displayed Hadley to him. His dark, spiky head bowed fractionally to his boss and vampire superior. His leather outfit squeaked as he turned his full attention to me, as it was rare for me to address staff personally.

"This is Hadley," I said as I gently turned her head to one side and brandished my mark to him. "She is mine."

The vampire bowed deeper. "Yes, Sheriff."

"She is to work with you tonight behind the bar. You will be kind to her." I moved Hadley forward and leaned over her, into the vampire's head space. "If she is distressed or damaged in any way under your watch..."

His eyes, heavy with eyeliner and mascara, lifted to mine to acknowledge my unfinished threat, then lowered again. "She is safe with me, Sheriff. I swear it."

I nodded, then turned Hadley to face me. She craned up and set her jaw stubbornly. Apparently that too ran in the family. "Can I get you anything before you retire, Sheriff?" she asked professionally.

A smile tugged at my lips. "No, pet. I will summon you if you're needed."

She bowed to me just as my bartender had. "Enjoy your evening, sir," she offered politely.

Pleased, I said nothing and turned away. She may be foolish, but she was well-versed in serving my kind. This was a boon in our favor.

I was halfway back to my office when Pam swept through the front door. Despite being filthy from head to toe, she wore that mud with the same haughty elegance as she would any of her couture suits.

I palmed her dirty cheeks and smiled faintly. "You are a singularly stunning creature, Pam," I noted honestly.

She snorted and rolled her smudged eyes. "Pretty words aren't presents," she replied. "Whatever you're getting me, everything I wear is a size four."

I'd heard this many times. Pam's vanity knew no bounds when it came to her slim waist, tiny feet, slender fingers, and any other female measurement of hers. I sighed with strained patience. "You'll be rewarded, darling. Don't get pissy."

Satisfied, she nodded and made to walk towards the Employees Only area. I stayed her.

"When they come, take them to my booth," I instructed. "Make sure Hadley takes their order. I want them to see her alone."

Pam raised a brow. "Why?"

"To prove her insignificance," I answered. "To show them that she's a tasty little plaything of a sheriff and not an unpredictable vampire killer."

"You seriously think they'll pardon her for supposedly killing five vampires, including a monarch?"

"I think we did them a favor," I said as I watched her from across the room. "Whether they admit it or not, Sophie Anne's death is a blessing. If no one's making a fuss and the human responsible is under my control, then perhaps they'll be lenient."

Pam followed my line of sight and watched as Hadley popped a Tru Blood into the microwave and made soft, shy conversation with the vampire man who'd ordered it. It was clear that her sweet Southern belle persona piqued his predatory interest. When the vampire attempted to put his hand over hers, my regular bartender shot from the other side and smacked him backwards.

"Behave yourself," my man hissed at him. "The lady belongs to the Sheriff."

The client pulled back grudgingly from the bar, taking his Tru Blood with him, but his eyes not dropping from the girl.

Hadley smiled with a kind of wan serenity that would only heighten the vampire's interest. "It was real nice talkin' to you," she offered as he skulked away.

Pam snorted with amusement. I felt it, as well. Perhaps I'd been hasty in thinking Hadley should work elsewhere. Perhaps I was even wrong to think she should change her clothes. Humans may not come here expecting to see a blonde debutante, but my vampire patrons would certainly enjoy the fantasy of drinking someone so virtuous in appearance. She might be fucking good for business.

Hm.

I turned back to Pam. "Go ready yourself. I'll be in my office." I turned away, but caught her arm. "_Knock._"

A slithering chuckle left her. "I _thought_ I smelled candy." She walked off.

Indeed. She had no fucking idea.

When I entered my office, I found my candy lounging on my new sofa in lemon yellow lace underwear. She smirked when I halted and bared my fangs at her audacity.

"Nice couch," she remarked conversationally, stretching across its length, scissoring her legs and arching her belly.

"Just what do you think you're doing?" I snarled softly.

"Me?" she batted her eyes and touched between her breasts, just below her necklace. "I'm just making sure I don't conflict with your 'branding'. I hate the thought of clashing with your business's identity."

I took one menacing step forward. "What if I'd been Pam?"

"Well," Sookie turned those maddening eyes upward in thought. "She could give me a quick lesson on your company's core values, marketing strategies, logos and taglines, authorized fonts and colors..." she looked back at me. "...et cetera."

I flashed to the sofa and dragged her into my lap. She shrieked, laughing musically as I roughly cinched her thighs over mine and cupped her face so that she couldn't escape my glare. "It's unwise to rile me, little girl," I warned.

She splayed herself wider on my lap and arched into my grasp. "I completely disagree," she purred.

My hands slid down her throat to her shoulders, yanking down her sunny bra straps. The cups flayed downward, exposing her perfect breasts. I jerked her into a kneeling position, bringing them level to my mouth.

"Yellow is definitely not one of those authorized colors," I informed her. I claimed her nipples, one in my mouth and the other in my hand.

"Oh, _no_," Sookie moaned with sweet dismay, her head dropping back as I gorged on her pebbled flesh. "What'll I _do_?"

She gasped loudly as I tore her underwear off, leaving her bare and quivering with adrenaline in my lap. "You will conform to my business guidelines."

I switched to her other breast and tongued her vigorously. Her hands were sliding in circles over my shoulders, spurring me on. I was so lost in her that I didn't notice when she reached for her necklace and pulled her miniature blade free from its sheath. Just near my busy mouth, she gently sliced her skin in a line two inches long between those glorious tits.

"What about red? Can I wear red?"

My nostrils flared and I jerked backwards, my darkness growling gleefully at the rivulet of blood seeping down her naked chest. Her loosened bra threatened to absorb it as it trickled towards her stomach. I ripped it away, then leaned her back and drove my tongue into an upwards lick.

"Wicked fairy," I accused as I lapped, refusing to let my supply escape. "You cut yourself to tempt me further?"

"It's my blood," she said lightly. "I can do what I like with it."

"It's _my_ blood," I shook her gently, not looking up from my snack. "That blade isn't meant for you."

She shoved my shoulders until I was flush against the sofa back. Wonderfully nude, she tossed her hair and laughed again. "You're the boss."

She tugged my t-shirt over my head and tossed it aside. A twin slice of red materialized on my sternum, two inches long between my pectorals. My lover leaned in and captured the drops as they slid down my chest. The sting of the blade and the heat of her tongue made my eyes roll back into my head. I yanked her closer, tugging her hand over my straining pants.

"Remove them," I gritted. "Like you did in the meadow."

She didn't ask what I meant, nor did she stop licking my now-healed chest. Instead, she blew my mind to pieces when her blade-wielding hand cut another, deeper wound into my shoulder, while the other hand caught fire long enough to strip me bare in a blink. I didn't see where my clothing ended up. I didn't care. Writhing naked in my lap, drinking from my shoulder, my mate paralyzed every fiber in my being. Except those in my hands and in my cock.

I lifted her up by the hips and impaled her on me.

Sookie tore herself away from my shoulder. "Aaah! _Yes!_"

I wrenched her hard, sinking that perfect pussy all the way down until our hips fused together. Digging my fingers into her ass, I hissed, "Ride me."

Gripping my waist for leverage, she obeyed, lifting and throwing herself onto me again and again.

"Never enough," she whispered, leaning in to kiss my fangs. "I can't get enough of you." Through the emotional orgy of our bond, a tiny heart shape shimmered from her side. She was likening it to me as she ran her tongue over my teeth, for some reason.

I cupped her ass harder, opening her wider as she thrust. I cut my tongue and dipped low, running my blood over her self-inflicted slice. "Never," I agreed into her delicious skin. "Never enough of you."

We continued to christen my new sofa for another two hours, Sookie climaxing in my arms and sobbing my name until she went limp with exhaustion after number three. Satisfied that I'd shattered her, I turned her around and slipped into her from behind, her back plastered against my chest. She moaned wantonly, turning her head to kiss my throat as I continued to take my pleasure in her boneless body.

"Feels so good," she murmured as I plunged deep in her core while fondling her breasts and rubbing her clit. "How can you always feel this good?"

She wasn't expecting an answer and I simply grunted, increasing my pace slightly as I felt the tingling sensation in my balls start to build. She experienced that purely-male stir through our bond and moaned again, trapped in the echo of my ecstasy. Reaching under my hand as I rubbed her core, she cupped my sack gently, stroking it until it tightened even more and forcing us both to groan in bliss.

"I feel this," she noted with drugged delight. "I feel how happy it makes you."

"More," I rasped desperately, my speed picking up again. "Touch me more."

I slammed my eyes shut and concentrated on how our actions plucked our shared nerve awareness. Her hands on me. My hands on her. Our joined bodies. We experienced it all.

"Shoot me," I pleaded, trapping her hand over my sack. "Destroy me, sweet baby." The endearment escaped my lips without my notice. I've never called anyone 'baby' in my entire life.

Sookie nodded hastily, her other hand curling back around my neck. I felt both of them hum to life, warm light flaring up under my face and between our joined laps.

"Love you so much," she whispered into my neck.

Her Light detonated. Fae-designed ecstasy shot into my throat and through the root of my dick. Unearthly pleasure rocketed through me, nearly cracking my bones in half and boiling my blood. I roared as it threatened to rip me inside out. Sookie's orgasm charged through her system and tipped into mine. She seized on top of me, screaming and clenching me wildly as her core squeezed me dry. Her nails dug into me. Her teeth nipped my jaw as her human nerves experienced my electrocution and triggered her bite reflex. I couldn't control my strength. I hugged her to me so tightly that I was terrified I would crush her, but I couldn't stop. She moaned, melting back into me until I felt nothing but soft tremors running out of her muscles and into mine.

I detected no injury as she went limp against me.

"Eric," she crooned, her hand loosening its hold on my neck and sliding back to cup my head.

My lips simply repeated their last words, as my mind couldn't form any new ones. "Sweet baby," I whispered, nuzzling through her hair and kissing her soft shoulder.

She turned her head and found my ear, taking the lobe between her lips and nibbling lightly.

My chest erupted with post-coital vibrations and she smiled against the side of my head. "I will never..._ever_...get enough of you," she reiterated quietly.

Through the wall, the din of loud voices and the pulse of dance music pricked my ears as I continued to caress her. She picked her head up from my throat and listened. I could feel her sadness at the prospect of joining the real world once again.

Stubbornly, I drew her back, growling in disapproval, until she was plastered to me and I could continue to lick her skin like ice cream. She sighed and relaxed back, letting me.

Fuck the Authority, whenever they decided to show up.

Fuck Pam and her endless supply of amusing insubordination.

Fuck Hadley. Fuck Bon Temps. Fuck everything that divided Sookie's attention away from me.

"Never," I echoed, palming the back of her head so that I could lick further along her throat. "I will _never_ get enough of you."


	26. Chapter 26

**A/N:** Dudes, a zillion apologies for not updating faster. I had my first baby back in July and he promptly ate all my free time. Needless to say, he doesn't get my TB love. But I'm fighting it! Meanwhile, love to everyone for their reviews and angry demands that I update faster. They crack me up. I apologize if I didn't answer them all, I just figured I'd spend my time on the story. But I still love them, so don't stop. Sookie's POV. Lemons now. Plot later.

I shouldn't have worried about luxuriating naked in Eric's lap while we ate up the night with sex. The Authority never showed up. As three o'clock drew closer and closer, it became clear that they weren't going to pay us an immediate visit. For most of the evening, the tiny part of me that wasn't consumed with Eric had been nervously waiting for Pam's knock, the unwanted intrusion signaling the Authority's arrival. It never came. We'd been left alone.

At two-forty five, we were still curled up together, Eric lying on the sofa with me draped over his chest and between his legs. If it hadn't been for that unpleasant anticipation, I would have had a scrumptious night.

"So what do you think it means? Them not coming?" I asked, idly fingering the column of his throat.

Pleasant shivers ran up my back as his hands roved along my spine and ribs. "One of two things," he concluded. "Either they have yet to decide the validity of our story or the seriousness of the crime, or..." His errant hands slid lower and gripped my butt. I gasped, never able to anticipate his lewd nature.

"Or?" I echoed, arching into his hands.

"Or they don't give a fuck and this situation rates low on their to-do list."

"God, please let it be the second one."

"Indeed," he rasped, kneading his fingers into my flesh.

A beeping sound startled us. I recognized it and fished on the floor beside us until I found my phone. I had a new text message.

_Called Jason & asked 2 stay w him 2nite. Safer in human home. Want 2 give U space. C U tomorrow? -Had_

I held the phone up to Eric's face. "That okay with you?"

Eric scanned the message. "Yes," he nodded. "That's acceptable." He reached for his pants on the floor and retrieved his own phone, fingering out a message so quickly that his fingers blurred.

"Pam will take her there and ensure her safety."

I chuckled as he tossed the phone aside again. "I'd say thanks, but I'm guessing your motives are less than generous."

His hands resumed accosting me. "Purely selfish," he agreed. "I want to chain you to my bed and make you scream for hours. However, you'd never allow it with company down the hall."

I cried out with melodramatic shock and slapped his chest. "Eric!"

"And then," he continued, "I'm going to drag you outside and watch you scream in the sunlight. Then I'll let you summon the fairy. Hadley needs to be elsewhere for all of this."

I couldn't help giggling, despite trying to look appalled. I just couldn't manage it when he was looking at me sweetly while talking dirty. Instead, I shook my head affectionately.

"We'll kill each other at this rate. You know that, right?"

"I'm immortal and you're too stubborn to die."

"Still. Maybe I should buy health insurance that covers vampire sex overdosing."

"Buy whatever you like. Just buy it online so I can fuck you from behind while you type in your details."

"Gross, Eric!" I smacked his cheek gently.

He smiled darkly, fanning his fingers over my back, refusing to let me pull away from his crudeness. "You love it."

_I did._

"Do not."

"Do too."

_Did too._

"Shut up," I huffed and texted back to Had. _Sounds good. B careful. Ignore Pam's BS. Love U_.

Not wanting him to see how totally right he really was, I laid my head on his chest, hiding my eyes and my badly-hidden smile. Subject change.

"So why do you want to meet Claudine?"

His fingers paused. I felt him searching for a way to tell me.

"There are passages in your book that interest me. The whole fucking book interests me. The fact that the Fae seem content to let you learn as you go along is no longer acceptable. If you have other abilities, or if the book is truly prophetic, then your people owe you an explanation."

"Hm," I murmured. He was right. As much as I liked Claudine, I did feel a little like E.T., getting information one Reece's Pieces at a time. It was taking too long, the trail often went cold, and more than anything, it felt like the candy was luring me towards a box propped up with a stick and a string attached.

"What if she doesn't come? She's a fairy. Not a wedding singer. I can't exactly book an appearance."

"Then I'll find a way to enter their realm and drag her ass back here."

"Ha!" I chortled. "The Fae realm is the vampire equivalent of Willy Wonka's crack house. How do you plan to be rational then? You'll go balls-out, foaming crazy and drink everyone in sight."

I tittered to myself, but Eric stayed silent, his arms slithering tighter around me, as if to protect me from my own words.

"Never," he said quietly over my scoff. "Yours is the only blood I want."

"Suuuure," I drew out in a teasing voice. "Why drink cheap human blood spiked with fairy when you can have pure, distilled Chateau Fair-eee?" I curly-qued the last word in exaggerated French.

His grip grew even harder. So hard I wasn't able to giggle as boisterously as before. My ribs were too trapped. I guessed our senses of humor weren't syncing up.

"Fuck their sugar water blood. Not only is yours all I want, it's all that I'm-," he stopped himself.

I lifted my head off his chest. The questioning look I gave him made his eyes flicker away. He grunted, annoyed.

"It's all that you're...?" I prodded.

He shifted beneath me. "It's all that I'm physically able to drink."

I grinned again. I admit it, I liked that he was so unwillingly sentimental. His irritated compliments made me all warm and gooey on the inside. It took a lot for a man so thrifty with his affection to openly admit such things. I felt powerful, knowing I could conjure them against his will. Through our bond, he caught the gist of my thoughts and shook his head.

"You misunderstand. I don't simply cherish your blood. Other blood repulses me. Literally. As badly as if I were offered human food. I doubt..." he paused, his eyes slitting and his chin jutting. "I doubt my body would accept it anymore."

My smile faded. "That's ridiculous," I chided him. "Of course it would. Other people and Tru Blood may not appeal to you anymore, but you could certainly _ingest_ them."

I could feel his conviction. It didn't lessen with my words. "No," he shook his head. "The weres in my basement and your cousin were near inedible. I couldn't swallow." He paused again, a faint smile tugging his lips. "Perhaps your jealous little fairy bond is to blame. It precludes me from anything but you."

I huffed, too incredulous to smile back. "No. No way. What if I'm injured? Or anemic or something? What are you supposed to eat if I can't feed you?"

He shrugged beneath me. "I'm very old, lover. My needs aren't that of Comp-," he stopped short, knowing I hated hearing that name. He amended. "Of younger vampires. I need only a pint a week. And I can survive on less, if need be, for a very long time."

"Unless _you're_ injured," I pointed out.

"True," he conceded. "But who knows? Perhaps our bonds have accounted for these problems in some way."

"Jeez," I breathed softly, lowering back to his chest, my mind reeling. "I really hope it ain't so. I don't want you hobbled like that."

"It's hardly a handicap, Sookie. Your blood is liquid ecstasy."

"Yeah, but... I mean... I doubt that fairies put any serious thought into the nutritional needs of vampires when they created this bond thing. I mean..." I looked up at him uncertainly. "What happens when I die? I'm not gonna live forever, right? Will you be able to go back to drinking others?"

His face turned to stone and he snarled angrily at me. Our bond churned up and went dark and ugly. Eric was not pleased by my questions.

"You won't die," he barked. "Not ever."

_Aw, baby._ I softened, pursing my lips and stroking his arms consolingly. He of all people knew better. "Eric. Come on now. You know that's not true. I'm human. Humans die. I'll give you the rest of my life, but..." I kissed his chest. "... Compared to you, I won't be around for very long."

In his head, I saw my book. He was flipping rapidly through the pages, his recall of the text incredible. In it, I saw his focus on certain passages, but he moved between them so quickly that I couldn't read them. He was choking that book in his mind, wringing it out. Demanding it give him something. I wasn't entirely sure why he was thinking about it at all.

"No," he shot back with endearing, childlike adamance. "I won't allow it."

His insistence was sweet, but a thought occurred to me that left me feeling cold. "Allow it? Do you...?" I couldn't bring myself to ask.

Fear filtered between us. Eric felt it settling around me and tipped my chin up, making me look at him. "Do I what, lover? Why are you suddenly afraid?"

The chill of the room suddenly leached into my skin and left me shivering. I couldn't not answer him. "Do you want to turn me? Is that what you mean?"

His shock slapped my mind, followed quickly by his revulsion. "No," his answer was small compared to the massive objection simmering between us.

I cocked my head. I was glad, but jeez. He'd said that awfully quick. "No? You never even thought about it?"

There was still a lot of swirling dislike in him. Boy, he hated this turn of conversation. "I have," he admitted. "But only for a moment. I don't want you as a vampire, Sookie. I want you as you are now. Warm and young and alive. I'll lose too much of you if I turn you, including your blood."

That was true, I supposed. He'd starve if I became a vampire. I felt that there was a lot more to his answer, but he left it unsaid and I didn't press. I didn't want to upset him anymore, and it was clear that me becoming a vampire angered him almost as much as me dying. Wanting to calm him, I returned to our original point.

"So," I chirped. "How much blood can I feed you in a given week?" I prodded and squeezed around his middle. "Be sure to round up as high as possible. I need to fatten you up."

That got him. The idea of him getting fat made him snort with amusement. He squeezed me back, his love killing his anger in a flash. Equally playful, his squeeze turned as evaluating as a livestock judge.

"Petite adult female. Mid-twenties. Average blood pressure. Excellent health." He leered over my head. "Daily intake of very powerful vampire blood."

He squeezed my shoulders. My ribs. My arms. Then a very thorough grope of my ass. My thighs. Then an unprofessional caress between them. A final sweep over the whole kaboodle.

_Moo_

"About two and a half pints a week," he surmised after his assessment. "Possibly more, if I fed a steady supply of my own."

"Well, there we go," I concluded jokingly. "Plenty. We don't need to worry about it." _For now_.

He let it go as well. Apparently neither of us wanted to think about me dying or vamping out.

There was a knock at the door.

"Shit!" I muttered, curling into a ball on Eric, trying to hide my nudity. Eric was already on it, grabbing a blanket from the sofa back that I hadn't even noticed and tossing it over the both of us. My insides went all gooey again. The blanket was deep blue and made of angora. It felt like a hundred silky bunny rabbits frolicking on my skin. Obviously, Eric didn't need blankets and didn't give a damn about covering his nekkid ass. Hence, he'd gotten it for me.

_Aw, baby._

"Enter!" he barked, crossing his arms over my back, but refusing to move otherwise. This was his office. Clearly, he figured he could be as nekkid and sexed-up he wanted in it. I pulled the blanket up to my chin and eyed the door with shy expectation. Never had I been without clothes in so many public places since dating Eric.

Pam walked in.

Her smoky eyes sparkled with annoyed amusement before dropping deferentially to the floor. I guess Eric had made it very clear that I wasn't cool with her seeing us like this. Maybe he wasn't cool with it, either. Maybe he'd grown a sense of privacy, now that he had a soulmate instead of an exhibitionist Saturday night fuck. Here's hopin'.

"What?" Eric asked.

"Closing time," she answered, eyeing the floor like it bored the shit of her. "The human did well tonight as a bartender. You should consider keeping her. She's practically covered with semen and five-dollar tips."

"Ew, Pam," I drew my lips back.

Eric smirked. "Perhaps. As long as the semen and tips came from customers and not you. The Authority?"

Pam waved her hand dismissively. "No show. I even sent Chow outside to check for their spies. There's nothing." She raised her finger. "Point of order," she drawled. "I'm a very tidy fuck. If Hadley's a spooge rag, it's someone else's work."

"Double ew, Pam."

"Take her to Jason's," Eric ordered. "Walk her inside. Explain that neither of them are to open the door to strangers, lest they get glamored."

"Yes, Eric."

"Leave. Call me when you're finished."

It must have burned her up to do it, but she left without any parting shots. God, if Pam were still human, leaving silently like that, without purging her usual snark, would have given her cancer. The door closed and we were alone once again.

"So," I mused.

"So."

"Wanna get dressed and go home?"

He didn't answer right away and I felt his mild surprise at my using the word 'home'. I guessed it was a little odd. The word itself was so..._normal_. Like we were ordinary people, working nights somewhere, eager to get home and watch the sunrise before falling asleep for the day. Call us coalminers or MacDonald's graveyard shift managers.

I pinned my chin to his chest and wiggled it around. The bone-on-bone tickling made him flinch. I giggled. I loved it when he flinched.

"Yes," he said finally. "Put your clothes on."

I went to rise off him, but he grabbed my wrist to get my attention. "Slowly," he clarified. "I want to watch."

My eyes went wide and my instincts screamed at me to huddle deep under the blue blanket currently covering my naked body. When men looked this angrily sexual, it was my usual reaction to shy away from them.

For the first time ever, I fought it. My murdering teddybear wanted a peep show. A crazy little bolt of excitement shot through me and told me to give him just that. He was probably so used to women just doing whatever the hell he told them to. Had any of them ever succeeded in beating him at his own game? Made him lose his precious control, slowly exposing or covering up curves until he tore across the room? My guess was no. They stripped or clothed at his command, wide-eyed and giggly, delighted that he was even talking to them. I'd bet my house that he kept all the power in that situation, regardless.

I grabbed the blanket's edge and slowly peeled it away from my naked body.

Let's see if he could keep his shit together when a tinkerbell flashed him a wink at the pink.

Standing next to the sofa and his sprawled, rapt body, the first thing I did was stretch. My arms high above my head, I yawned prettily and arched my ribcage. I could feel my breasts lift with the movement, just like I could feel my ass rounding and jutting out in an accidental slut pose.

"Mmmmmm," I purred lazily, turning this way and that, my eyelids sinking low. "So _sore_..."

I wasn't a lie. I'd been fucking a thermos-sized dick for over a week now. I wasn't a big girl to begin, and it was only because Eric made me so wet and eager that I was able to accommodate him at all. Had he forced himself on me when he'd first met, like he suggested he might have, I would have been battered and bruised from the inside out. Thank goodness he waited for me to come around. All I felt now was mildly achy and thoroughly fucked-up.

Out of the corner of my eye, I was satisfied to see that his initial expression of smug amusement had melted into a hard, predatory mask. I had his attention, that was for sure. I locked my hands behind my head and shook my hair, letting it cascade down my back as I stretched out my triceps. "Ow," I pouted like a little girl with a boo-boo. _Poor, pitiful, naked me. Won't someone please take pity on me?_

Next, I made a show of looking for my clothes. I knew damn well where they were. I'd taken them off and folded them on his desk before he'd come in. Still. I tapped my finger to my lips and looked around, clueless. "Now where are those pesky things? I know they're around somewhere."

Looking slightly over my shoulder at him, I bent at my waist, pretending to look under a chair. "Not here. That's weird."

I dropped to my hands and knees in front of him, primly lifting his jeans and shirt, searching underneath them while giving him an eyeful of my breasts. "Huh. Not here."

I wasn't looking at him, but our bond told me that his gaze was lasering over my back and lowered head. A low, dangerous growl filled the room. I froze, instantly transported back to when I was seven years old and playing in the woods. Playing in the creek and laughing happily to myself, I'd frozen as something huge and angry made that same noise. I'd looked around, terrified, trying to find the source. Seconds later, an enormous German shepherd stalked out of the bushes, its unblinking eyes fused to me from its lowered head. I'd barely been able to scramble up a tree when it lunged at me, snapping at my legs and barking wildly.

Slowly, I looked up at Eric.

His whole body was rigid from his shoulders to his toes. His erection was ramrod straight and pointing accusingly. His eyes burned. His jaw was locked.

I swallowed and committed figurative suicide.

Staring him down, I got to my feet, turned around, and went to his desk.

"Here they are," I whispered. I reached across the entire length of his desk, bent at the waist. My hips and breasts were pressed into the cold wood. My legs were parted. Knowing what I was asking for and working out the logistics, I climbed up onto it, splaying my knees as wide as possible, my pussy almost touching the surface from my split position.

I reached out for my shorts and tank top just next to his computer.

I never made it.

Eric was behind me in a flash, growling and snarling and taking a single second to position himself before ramming deep.

"Uhh!"

"Fuck!" he shouted loudly, gripping my hips at their perfect height on his desk and rutting against me in rough, unmeasured strokes.

"Careless...reckless..." he muttered behind me. I whimpered and splayed myself wider, holding perfectly still, allowing my man to fuck me exactly how I wanted him to. I arched my back and mewled sweetly, wanting more.

"I was getting dressed. Like you wanted," I cried out in an innocent, girlish, I'm-so-fulla-shit voice.

"Shut up," he hissed, tightening his hold and making me groan with wanton pleasure. "Tight, cockteasing little liar."

Everything that was angry, hungry, and violent that lived in him was inside me now, physically and mentally. His mind was alive with all kinds of brutal, wild yearnings while his cock was nothing but a monument to fucking for fucking's sake.

"Yesssssss," I wailed at his state of mind. "Just like that. Please don't stop, baby. Oh, God!"

"What am I supposed to do with you?" His raspy voice dripping with blame. "Do I have to keep you on my dick forever, just so I can stop _constantly_ wanting you like this?"

"Uh-huh," I hiccuped, his battering hips making it hard to speak. Or think. Or do anything except come screaming-

"_Eric Eric Eric_!" I sobbed, my hunched, prone body imploding in ecstasy. My taut thigh muscles were trembling under the strain. He didn't slow down. I was forced to endure the overstimulation, crying and grunting under his force. Because he wasn't finished yelling at me yet.

"So fucking tight when you're spread like this," he noted, his thumbs edging along my inner thighs, offering no support, just enjoying their firm, flexed position. He could feel my strain, but did nothing to lessen it. Bastard. "Maybe I'll just chain you here instead of bed. No clothes. No freedom. You'd stay bent over my desk, ready for me whenever I feel like coming all over your ass."

"Eerrric," I moaned pitifully. Even to my own ears, I sounded like a needy little whore.

"Shut up," he repeated, sinking all the way in, then pumping against me without withdrawing. "Time-squandering girl. Shut the fuck up and scream."

I didn't call him out on his contradiction. I just screamed. The bar was closing. The employees and straggler customers were quiet. Everyone heard us as Eric joined me, roaring and cursing as thick, ropy jets of his come filled me up. I could feel the bruises forming as the squeezed my hips a few times more, holding me down and marking me with the scent of his sex.

With a gentleness that belied our roughness, he lowered my legs and cuddled me from behind, letting himself slip free in the process. I murmured my gratitude, my hands sliding over his arms around me.

A softer, much more contented growl vibrated against my back. Angry Eric had fucked himself into Happy Eric again. I smiled softly.

"Have I hurt you?" he asked against my hair.

"No. Never."

His purr deepened and his hands molded my curves in lazy strokes. "My beloved," he muttered against me.

My smile grew. "You're right, time's awastin'. Put your pants on." I looked over my shoulder with a reproving glare. "Be sure not to look at me when I'm putting on mine."


	27. Chapter 27

**A/N**: I find that writing this story helps me deal with the fallout of season four's fuckedupedness. I try so hard not to rant in my ANs, but I just watched episode 12 again, and it only reinforced what I thought all along: Sookie is a date rapist. If she'd been a dude who shagged a amnesiac woman, then dumped her once she'd come to, we'd all decry him for being such a heartless, predatory dick. But instead she's a chick, which means she's not a "douche", she's "conflicted" and "confused". And that scene where she's feeding both of them at the same time? The scene where she glibly accepts Bill's undying love as a given, then turns around and tells Eric (in front of Bill) that she's always wanted him, but it's over? Dude. Chick's a dick. Eric's POV.

I hardly looked at her as we dressed.

I hardly looked at her as we left Fangtasia and drove home.

I made myself not look at her as I quickly checked my home's perimeter for signs of possible spies, then checked my email for word from the Authority, plus any updates in regards to my area or my businesses.

I didn't want to look. Looking at Sookie (especially when I knew she was walking around with no panties on) eroded my concentration and did pleasant, horrifyingly distracting things to my dick. The way she'd crawled onto my desk, pretending to reach for her clothes, splaying her knees wide and provoking me with the sight of her perfect, inviting pussy. I'd had no choice. I was fucking her before I'd even realized I'd crossed the room.

She seemed maddeningly unaware. Right now, she skipped upstairs like fucking Shirley Temple, her hair bouncing behind her as she called out that she was going to shower and change. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her little white shoes disappear up my stairs, all but daring me with their innocent heels to come and do something about how cute I found them. _Was I chickenshit?_ they asked me. _Was I above rushing her on the staircase, knocking her down and fucking her from behind again while she laughed in triumph at my total lack of control?_

If I hadn't had her half a dozen times in the last twenty-four hours, they might have been right. That girl had my balls on a leash, complete with a little bell. Everywhere she went, they followed behind like eager labradors, nipping at her legs, begging for attention. To think of all the women I'd fucked in this wide world, who meant nothing to me accept an amusing waste of time. The way those women had followed me with the same pathetic devotion that I now gave Sookie. I disgusted myself, and took only a small comfort that the owner of my balls was an angel and would never use them against me. The fact that I owned her heart was also a consolation, though not as big of one as I would have liked. Every time I looked at her, I saw a human-sized diamond, flawless and bright and attracting attention from every angle. She might have been too modest and sweet to know her own worth, but I knew every vampire in the world saw that same diamond. Under the bedrock of my confidence, that fact shook me to the bone.

I was stronger than most of them, but I wasn't as strong as all of them.

They could try to take her. They could try to woo her. I wasn't sure which prospect blinded me more. My hands trembled. I knew now that she couldn't be bitten, but what about knives? Bullets? Love spells? The thought of other hands on her, whether hurting her or caressing her, her beautiful eyes wide with fear... or interest.

But no. She was mine. Her skin and her mind and her Light and her fucking beautiful eyes, they were _mine_. She only cared for me. Fuck, her Light had Chosen me before either of us were even aware of how perfect we were together. We were that fucking fated. And while I might be only one vampire among millions, my fairy was only one of dozens, if not fewer, and she belonged to me. We were one.

I growled in annoyance. The ache in my chest that was Sookie's remove informed me that that was total bullshit. We were _not_ one. Not physically. She might have only traipsed upstairs for a shower, but that only served to illustrate that she couldn't live wrapped around my hips, like I'd threatened her in my office. She was capable of wandering away. She was capable of being kidnapped. The ache in my chest was a two-pronged pain: one was my blood inside her, calling out to me and wanting my closeness. The other was her Light, throbbing hotly, demanding I find its owner and protect and love her with every fiber of my being.

Our exchanged powers were hungry little bastards. Both the blood I'd given her and the Light she'd given me were never satisfied unless we were skin to skin, rutting and screaming and oblivious of everything except each other.

As much as I wanted to, we couldn't fuck in perpetuity.

From my study, I cocked my head to one side and listened to the patter of the shower water above my head. Sookie was humming very softly to herself. It had no melody, it was just the soft noise of a happy girl.

My growl deepened. I wanted this Claudine creature. Now.

I wanted her to stand in front of me and guarantee that Sookie now shared my immortality. I wanted her to assure me that the Fae tome was actually an instruction manual that outlined how Sookie and I would live forever, free of enemies and jealous rivals, complete with a list of desert islands we could choose from, on which we would live out the rest of our limitless days.

The book may have been six inches thick, but that excerpt was the only possibility I cared about. Sookie must not die. At least not a human's death. If her expiration were to occur in five thousand years, I supposed I might begrudge the compromise. It was a big might, though. Five thousand years felt like a swan song, if that was all the time I was given to be with my mate. But I would take it. Anything was better than fifty-odd years, during which Sookie would age and sicken. If that proved to be the alternative, I would track down Time itself and kill the bastard.

Shaking off my gloomy thoughts, I grabbed my phone and hit the speed dial.

She answered in one ring. "Fuck Off Chauffeur Service. Picking up or fucking off?"

"Fuck off," I chose from her list. "Is it done?"

"Your latest blonde acquisition has been taken to her cousin's." I heard Pam's irritated smirk, her tongue sliding over the line of her teeth.

"Hadley," I corrected. "Do not refer to her as mine. Only Sookie."

"Happy," she incorrectly repeated. "As in 'Happy ending'. If you're so above your own bite, can I have her?"

"Pam," I drew her name out warningly.

She sighed, pained. "Fine."

"Good girl. Now I need you to find two guards: a vampire and a day walker, preferably a shifter. People we can trust."

"Is your ass too busy and naked to guard Sookie properly?"

"Fuck off," I repeated. "The guards are for the child. Hadley is immaterial, but her son is a serious liability."

Pam paused. "Won't a child surrounded by supe guards tip our hand?"

"Not if they operate on the periphery. The child and the parents will be ignorant of their presence."

"Very well. I'll make enquires."

I hung up. Sliding my hand through my hair, I stood facing my fireplace, lost in thought.

Suddenly, the Light in my chest flared and danced merrily as two sleek arms slid around my ribcage and I was hugged from behind. My gifted blood was pressed against my back, buzzing with equal joy now that it was nestled against its master.

"Sookie."

"Is it weird that I missed you? Just now when I was upstairs?" she mused as she rubbed her cheek between my shoulder blades. The smell of synthetic peaches and soap informed me that she'd found the gel I'd bought for her. She seemed to favor that fruit in her toiletries, so I'd bought them, hoping they pleased her.

I smiled lightly, snaking my arms over hers at my waist. "No."

I allowed her to hold me, enjoying how she started to sway softly, as if she were comforting a child. I released the pressure on my feet and let her take me with her, back and forth. Back and forth.

"I don't want to summon Claudine. I want to spend the day with you. Alone."

My smile deepened. "And I you."

"But you're gonna argue that we need to see her, right?"

"Yes."

"Because you have questions."

"Correct."

"So there's no point in me arguing back?"

"No point at all."

She smirked against me. "What if I argued naked?"

"You'd get fucked, then told no again."

Her heart smacked her breast. I felt it against my ribs. I smirked in kind.

"I'm not sure that's a deterrent," she murmured, rubbing her forehead against my shirt.

God damn her soft voice. I found myself already planning how to make her playful threat a reality. Her breathy exhalations and her firm, high breasts sliding against my back as we moved almost pissed me off, they were so distracting. I turned in her arms, lifting them away from me.

"No time for play," I admonished, looking down at her. She was wearing a soft gray cotton baby tee and a pair of very improper tiny green short shorts. Her feet were bare. Without even asking, she was asking for it.

Her lips puckered in annoyance. "Meanie."

Chuckling, I walked to my desk and took out her book from my lock box. I held it out to her. "It will be dawn in half an hour. Where would you like to try?"

She shrugged, coming forward to take it from me. "I don't think it matters. Claudine won't give a damn if she appears in your library, or sitting room or even your walk-in humidor. The only thing she'll dislike is you. Vampire and all."

"Walk-in humidor? Why would I have such a thing?"

She shrugged again, holding the book to her chest. "Why do you have a kitchen?"

"It came with the house."

"Yeah, but houses this big _always_ have weird rooms. Bat caves, panic rooms, silver closets, secret pervert alcoves over the beds, underground hydroponic pot farms, and of course, some giant room filled with dollar bills that you roll around naked in," she touched her fingers as she counted off her list.

Her mind was simply wonderful. I drew a finger down her cheek. "Why would I roll naked in money?"

"I dunno." She looked up at me with teasing disinterest. "Make money angels?"

Money angels. I grabbed her face and kissed her savagely. She giggled in my mouth, kissing me back, but with a smug, victorious laziness that made me kiss her even harder. Christ, she made me crazy.

"I'll call my contractor tomorrow. He'll build any weird room you want."

She snorted against my lips. "Right. Cuz two people need waaaay more than this pathetic twenty-thousand square foot shack."

I paused. "Two people?"

Her face instantly straightened and her eyes dove for the floor. "One. One person."

I drew her more fully into my arms, tsking her. "We're bound together for life, lover. You needn't blush. You _will_ live with me permanently."

She didn't look up, her embarrassment at her slip showing on her cheeks. "We haven't talked about it."

"We haven't talked about many things. I don't care where we are, or whose house we're occupying, we're living together from now on."

I felt a soft, wavering uncertainty in her. It had an odd, unfamiliar feel to it. She feared something about me. I cocked my head and zeroed in on it. She feared... my inflexibility. And my wealth. She whispered. "I want to keep my house. Please..." She looked up, her eyes wise with the knowledge of what I was capable of. "Please don't do anything to it. Like tear it down or something? Just to make sure I stay here with you?"

I slid my hands down her back. "You honestly think I would?"

She bit her lip sheepishly. "I think you can. Those two things usually go hand in hand."

My fingers met the twin curves of her hips. I let them play there for a moment. "You love your home. And you're impossibly proud. If I destroyed that house, I would break your heart _and_ you'd never forgive me." Sookie's sadness could only be rivaled by her silence. She would never speak to me again if I indulged in such a frivolity. Bulldozing her house had never occurred to me, though it might have, had I merely wanted to outmaneuver her and leave her with no other option than to stay with me. Her pride would have been another obstacle, however. This woman would have likely preferred homelessness to letting some man force her into check. I was a master at chess, but Sookie would simply set the board on fire and tell me to shove my king up my ass.

As far as I knew, chess strategy had no answer to such a play. Another reason I adored her.

I burrowed my face into the side of her head. Her hair was dry. She hadn't washed it. The scent of peaches was outshone by the scent of fairy. I filled my lungs with it.

"Your house will stand for the next five hundred years, if you wish it. I'll have it declared a Louisiana heritage site. I'll set up a trust to ensure its upkeep. I'll dig a fucking moat around it with my bare hands." I felt her ear through her tresses and nuzzled into it. "Will that mollify your fears of my fickle nature?"

She cuddled into me, her mind warming with mirth. "Wouldn't the fact that you're fickle mean you could renege any time you wanted?"

I smiled. "Our location is irrelevant, Sookie. As long as you're by my side. I would never destroy your belongings." I paused and reconsidered. "Except for your car. I _will_ destroy your car."

A stinging slap hit my arm. "I'll starve you for a month if you so much as touch it."

My mouth slid forward until I found her cheek. "You don't love it. You drive it out of necessity." I tapped her head. "You feel nothing but annoyance when you think about it. You'll secretly love me even more when I buy you a new one, even if you act angry."

"Shut up," she miffed against my face.

"Stop arguing," I countered. "Or I'll spend an extra ten-thousand dollars on its replacement for every minute we waste discussing it."

She scoffed. "Well, then you're buying me the damn Mir space station, cuz we're going to fight about this 'til the cows come home."

Oh, if only she knew. When the Russian government ran into financial troubles earlier this year and began courting private interests to help maintain their space program, my corporation invested heavily in the _Mir 2_. I imagined that without too much difficulty, I could indeed buy the remaining equity and present her with the deed, just to see the look on her face.

"Shall we shelve it for now?" I suggested, pulling away, wanting to swim in her eyes instead.

I felt her melt as she looked at my face. I smirked. She might be a hellcat, bent on denying me on principle, but that didn't mean she didn't find me hard to resist. She huffed. "Fine. Shelved."

"Excellent." I fingered the book that she held between us. "Time to meet your family."

E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E

It started slowly.

I stood outside with Sookie, watching the dawn's light as it dove into her hair and reflected wheat and honey. We'd decided that while Claudine would appear or not appear no matter where we tried, the sunrise was special to us. A small part of me was still disbelieving as I watched the light stronger while feeling no pain as the sun discovered my unauthorized presence. I was suddenly a small child on the beach again, too near the ocean's torrent, away from where the other children played in safety on the dunes. My mother would smack my hands, admonishing me, telling me I was too small to test such angry water.

I still expected such punishment from above, but the sun was no longer angry at me.

I looked at my hands, dazed as sunlight blanched my pale skin. I looked back to Sookie. She held her book earnestly, her eyes closed in concentration. My_ true_ sunshine.

I waited quietly. She didn't believe the book was pivotal to her summons, but didn't think it could hurt, either. I felt her rummaging around her own mind, collecting and discarding thoughts that might help her pull her fairy relation from her hiding place.

"Claudine?" she asked the air around us. "I need to see you. Can you hear me?"

Nothing.

She pursed her lips, squinting harder behind her lids. "Please," she entreated. "I know you sense Eric. He's not a threat, I promise. You've come to me in this place before and I'm asking you to again. We need your help."

The birds sang happily from the trees above us. The trees whispered softly to each other in the breeze. The smell of Sookie took most of my attention, filling me with its usual notes of smug propriety. Several minutes went by.

"Shall I wait inside?" I offered.

She shook her head. "She's not stupid. She knows you're here and that you can day walk. If you wanted to hurt her, all you'd have to do is zip outside again and grab her."

I sniffed again. Yes. My woman was maddeningly fragrant. I watched as she readjusted her stance, tossing her head back and clearing her throat. "Please," she called louder. "I know you can hear me." She held the book out, offering it. "What the hell is this thing?"

I took one breath after another. Something was happening. Still watching her, I slid one step towards her, raising my head and scenting the air. Sookie didn't notice. She was sending her vibes out into the universe and wasn't looking as my mood turned unexpectedly predatory.

"She's here," I spoke low, taking another step.

"I don't feel anything."

Another step. Sookie suddenly smelled like heavily-chummed water. I swallowed. "You're sweeter."

She turned towards me slightly and smiled, not understanding. "Stop," she said modestly.

"You don't understand." I reached out and snatched her close. She gasped softly, but didn't struggle. I buried my nose in her throat and breathed deep. "Fairy," I said against her. "Delicious little fairy." The urge to bite her was suddenly almost overwhelming. "Call out again. Tell her to step forward."

She drew a very cautious breath. "Are you hungry?" she asked quietly.

"I'm this close to tearing you apart," I warned lovingly. "Say. Her. Name."

"Claudine," she whispered.

The air thickened with pure light. A loud pop. And suddenly we weren't alone. I tore my eyes away from my lover's pulse and looked up to find an honest-to-god fairy in front of us. Dressed in ragged pink gauze, the pretty woman looked at us with wide, nervous eyes. Her scent was pleasant. Much like Sookie's, except stronger. I leaned forward and scented her. She flinched at my movement, taking a small step back.

Odd. She smelled luscious, yet I had no interest in her. Instead, I simply put my face back in Sookie's hair and breathed again, luxuriating in her increased potency.

Claudine addressed her kin, never taking her eyes off me. "Sookie," she acknowledged.

Sookie smiled, trying to step forward to greet her and away from me. No fucking way. I clutched her, growling low, licking the side of her neck, skewering Claudine with the wrath I suddenly felt at her presence. Sookie made a noise of exasperation, trying to push me away in front company, embarrassed by what she thought was an affectionate display. I held on tighter.

She gave up, standing in my arms, but holding her hand out to her. "Thank you for coming."

Claudine didn't step forward to take it. "Of course," she said. "You asked for me."

Sookie gestured up towards me. "Eric Northman, this is my fairy godmother, Claudine. Claudine," she motioned awkwardly between us. "This is Eric. My Chosen."

I wanted her gone. I wanted the whole world to empty. I wanted Sookie. Now. I never wanted to see another person ever again except her. I never wanted to touch anything else, or look at anything else. My mind was filled with her, her scent erasing my knowledge, my memories, my cares. I shook my head hard.

Claudine inclined her head slightly. "Vampire," she greeted cooly.

"Fairy," I gritted against Sookie.

Sookie pushed at me again. "Rude!" she hissed at me under her breath.

I didn't care. Neither did Claudine. Her icy blue gaze held no interest in meeting me, falling instead to the tome nestled against my mate's exquisite tits.

"_Stop_," Sookie whispered harshly. I'd filled our bond with my slithering, impatient demand for her. She had no idea. No fucking clue.

"What have you done?"

Claudine's question drew Sookie's attention back. Claudine was staring at the book in her hands. "What _have_ you done?"

Following her line of sight, Sookie held out the book in apology. "I'm sorry," she said automatically. "The vampire queen Sophie Anne had it. I stole it from her home, and now I need you to help us figure a few things out-,"

Awestruck, Claudine strode forward, knocking the book from my lover's hands. I hissed in fury as Claudine put her hands on Sookie's belly, looking at us with a wonderment that stayed me from killing her for her trespass.

"This," she breathed quietly, fingering the gray fabric of her tee. "Sookie, how is this possible? The Light of our kind..."

Sookie looked down at herself, frowning at her cousin's strange tone. "What are you talking about?"

"The pure Light," Claudine whispered, not answering her. She looked up at me. "The Scion," she said reverently. "Vampire, what have you _done_?"


	28. Chapter 28

**A/N**: Wow! Lots of people dislike the gist of the last chap! If I go off the radar for a couple weeks, it's only because the OTHER set of grandparents are here and I feel weird writing in front of them. Jeez, you have a kid and everyone wants a piece. Don't they know I got shit to write? Because of this, this chappie is half the length that I'd like, but I don't want to go too long without an update. Also, I've ADORED all of your reviews, but once again, FF is crap and brings up a 404 page every time I try to respond. Please know that I love you all and thank you for your thoughts. Sookie's POV.

Okay, this was definitely getting weird.

I was pressed between the two of them, both touching me in urgent hungry sweeps. I couldn't pry Eric out of my hair with a crowbar, and Claudine had fastened onto my stomach in a very uncharacteristic violation of my personal space. Her breezy calm seemed to have deserted her. In fact, she seemed just as enthralled with my tummy as Eric was with the rest of me.

"Uh, guys? A little space here?"

They ignored me.

I put one hand square on Claudine's chest and the other on Eric's stomach. I pushed as hard as I could without actually shoving.

"Come on, now. Sookie needs air," I tried to sound light and unconcerned.

Claudine came back to herself and dropped her hand, taking a small step back. Her eyes didn't leave my stomach, however. Eric, like I suspected, only tightened his hold and refused to budge one single inch, rubbing himself along my back and making that guttural, pre-sex noise deep in his throat.

I turned my head to hiss at him. "Baby," I warned. "Not now."

The grunts only got deeper.

"He can't hear you," Claudine said, making a slow, fascinated circle around the both of us.

"Why the hell not?"

Captured by a vampire. Stalked by a fairy. Yep, this was definitely creepy.

"My presence has brought out more of your Fae essence, cousin. Your scent is much stronger than usual. It has struck him insensible."

I smothered a squeak as my vampire's hands started to stroke up and down my hips. His fangs were down. His tongue found my ear. I tried hard not to let my eyes roll back into my head. Instead, I distracted myself by talking.

"Why...why isn't he smelling _you_? Don't...um... you smell stronger than I do? Quit!" I smacked at his hand as it found my breast.

A knowing smile cracked Claudine's concentration. "He's your Chosen. He doesn't want anyone else."

"I guess," I muttered.

Turning into him, I cupped his face and locked my eyes into his. _Hey!_ I shouted mentally at him. _ Stop it. You need to focus. Remember?_ I looked down at the book on the ground. _You have questions_.

The heavy clouds in his eyes were reluctant to leave. He was alive with hunger, as if he'd been pining for me for decades. He was so desperate. So empty without me. I leaned up and put my forehead against his.

"I'm here," I soothed. "I'll give you some blood later. Okay?"

His jaw unclenched slightly. Suddenly he saw me again.

"No," he answered gruffly, pressing his head to mine. "I'm all right. I just feel... I want to drink every drop of you."

Claudine came to a halt in front of us, having completed her circle. I felt like I'd been appraised from every angle. Looking down at myself, I didn't see anything worth such a weird reception. Just my t-shirt. Maybe my shorts weren't appropriate for company, but I hardly felt they deserved such a pointed stare. Claudine was a fairy godmother, not Mary Worth. I seriously doubted she cared that my upper thighs were on display.

I took a deep breath and stood straighter. "Okay," I said. "Let's start from the beginning. Claudine, why are you looking at me like my hair's on fire?"

Her gaze had settled back on my waistline. I cocked my brow. "Hello?"

"Sookie...you..." She cleared her throat, looking away with a troubled expression. I felt my face crinkle in confusion. What the hell was wrong with everyone all of a sudden? She bit her lip before speaking, her voice clear and directed at Eric. "You needn't worry, Vampire. Your reaction is normal. Fae and their mates always feel a need to consume each other."

Eric snorted in derision. "In my case, Fairy, it's an actual risk. You should leave. I'm having trouble controlling myself with her."

The stately woman gave an elegant wave of her hand, dismissing him. "You won't hurt her. You can't."

Eric growled at her indifference. "Don't make light of me. Her smell is maddening. If I broke her skin now, I wouldn't be able to stop from draining her dry."

I was starting to feel invisible as the two ancient creatures of my life talked about me like I wasn't there. Claudine shook her head, gesturing to the book at our feet. "Did you not even read this before you summoned me? Do you not understand your union at all?"

"Um...guys?"

"I've read all I care to," Eric replied, ignoring me. "All I want to know is if Sookie will now share my life." He leaned towards Claudine threateningly. "_All_ of my life."

I blinked. "What?"

Claudine looked almost bored. "Gods, Vampire. Is that honestly your biggest concern?"

I pushed at Eric's roaming hands again. "Guys," I drew out.

"Biggest concern?" Eric spat. "I'm bound to a human fairy. I have no interest in the madness that will consume me if she dies of something as mundane as heart disease in forty years."

"Die of heart disease in forty years? You tire me, Viking. Fairies do not sicken. Sookie herself has never been ill. Nor will she live a human's lifespan. A mated pair's life forces are entwined. Permanently."

"Guys!" I shouted, then drew up short. "Wait, what?"

Claudine graced me with her attention now. "Your lives, cousin. Surely you realize now that Eric's life and your own are no longer unequal."

"How the hell would I have realized _that_?" I replied, incredulous. "And what do you mean 'unequal'? Eric," I looked up at him. He was still hovering too close, his hands plucking at me despite my admonishments. "What are you asking her? And _you_!" I rounded on Claudine. "What do you mean Eric can't hurt me even if he tried? And why the _hell_ are you still looking at my stomach?"

Her eyes did that weird skittering thing again. She was annoyed that I'd brought us back to this question. To avoid it, she chose the first one. "Eric cannot hurt you. A Chosen never can. He can gorge on your blood for hours. He needn't withhold his strength when he touches you. He'll inflict no injury."

Like Eric, I snorted disdainfully. "Yeah, right. Eric can tear a Miata in half like a it was an Applebee's menu. Of course he can hurt me."

She merely blinked. "No longer."

_Bullshit._

She smirked. "No bullshit."

_Fuck!_ Stupid fairy telepathy. I forgot I wasn't the only one who had it.

"And how would you even know? You told me no fairy's ever even asked a vampire for the time, never mind mated to one. How can you be sure he can't hurt me?" I stopped and remembered. "My mean Light can certainly hurt _him_."

"Hardly," she reasoned. "Our Smite kills when a fairy is angry enough. Your training with Eric merely stunned him. Were you to Smite another vampire with the same fury, you'd kill him outright."

"Smite?"

She rolled her eyes and wiggled her fingers. "Your weapon. Did you not read the tome, either?"

"Hey!" I defended. "That book is a zillion years old and written in gibberish. Gimme a break."

Eric's body was now practically humming with intent. One hand smoothed up and down the curve of my ass while the other staked its claim just under my breasts. Claudine wasn't fazed. She seemed completely uninterested in Eric's volatile, fairy-hungry state.

I switched focus again.

"What about Eric's question? About our life spans?"

Her brow went up. Again, the conversation seemed to bore her. She gracefully bent down and retrieved the book that she'd so unceremoniously knocked from my hands. She cradled it in her arms, like suddenly it was the dry, frail tome of our people again and not a TV Guide that ended up on the living room floor. Her fingers caressed the binding.

"Exactly as I said," she replied. "If you'd Chosen a human, you'd live an average lifetime. But you've Chosen a vampire. Hence, you'll live as long as he does. Indefinitely."

Eric murmured happily from my neck. He'd somehow managed to snuggle into it again. But my brain collided head-on with Claudine's words. It made a serious mess.

"I don't understand."

My godmother sighed dramatically. "Eric is immortal," she said slowly, as if speaking a toddler. "You have given him your Radia. Your Radia is your life force, hence it will live within him for as long as he walks this earth."

"So what if he's staked tomorrow?"

"Then your Radia will extinguish. You, no matter where you are, will die as well."

"Oh, my God," I whispered. Jesus, Lord in Heaven, this couldn't be possible. "But... but what if _I_ die tomorrow? Another vampire attack? Car crash or something?"

Eric, who had exited the conversation and was slithering around my shoulders, yanked me closer and rumbled angrily. I guess he was paying just enough attention to get pissed off at an unpleasant question.

At this Claudine softened slightly. "Another vampire will not be able to, assuming the attack is designed to separate you. The bond will prevent such a death. But you're not indestructible. If you die in a car crash, your Radia will extinguish inside your vampire. He will not die, but your gifts to him will disappear. He'll no longer be able to day walk."

I said the first thing that popped in my head. "Thank God."

I mourned the thought of him never seeing the sun again, but at least he wouldn't die with me. Me, being so much weaker and slower than him, had a much better chance of checking out sooner. But again, he clutched me even tighter.

"It wouldn't matter," he gruffed in my ear. "The day you die, I'll meet the sun. I refuse to live without you."

"Hush!" I smacked at him.

He took my smack without noticing. "The second your Light leaves me, I'm following you into death and taking it back."

A ball of tears rose in my throat. I swallowed, making them retreat. "I love you," I murmured.

"Then don't die."

I smiled wanly and nodded. "Kay."

I turned back to Claudine. "So, if Eric dies two thousand years from now, I'll finally die as well? Won't I be just a dusty, crusty shell of an old woman by then?"

"Of course not," she said, insulted. "Fairies are the most beautiful creatures on earth. We don't putrefy like humans. You will remain the age you were the moment you Chose a mate."

She said it so casually. Like I hadn't Chosen a mate a week and a half ago. I swallowed carefully. "I'm going to be twenty-six forever? Two thousand years from now, I'll look like this?" I gestured down to my not-fit-for-company tee and short shorts.

She nodded. "Precisely."

Oh, shit. A thick, blinding wall of panic came at me. My lungs froze. I gasped. Little white dots filled my eyes and made me squeeze them shut. I inhaled and gasped again. And again.

Eric's hands went steely around me. His rubbing body turned solid and still as he buoyed me up against my own freak-out. If I'd been able to think, I would have remembered that he'd been here himself.

"It will pass," he murmured into my hair. "Do not fear your youth. It is a gift."

"It's unnatural," I whispered in a cracked voice. "People die for a reason. It's God's will."

"If that's true, then everything is God's will," he countered softly. "Including your life with me. You said so yourself, remember? I was made _twice_ for you." He was pleased with his own logic. "Now you have been made twice for me."

I kept my eyes shut. Suddenly I didn't want to look at the two examples of ancient youth in front of me. Eric might have had a point, but right that second, I refused to believe it. I was a human, goddammit. I might have had a fairy gene or two that helped me tan well and Smite bad guys, but there was a limit. Living forever was a far cry from the little perks I had.

Eric felt my overwhelmed thoughts. He roused himself out of his lustful stupor and took over.

"Can I drink anyone other than her now?"

She shook her head. "Never again. Unless she dies before you, then you may ingest whomever you like."

I felt his wish to strike her dead and I quickly squeezed his arms in fear. "Listen when I speak, Fae," he rasped angrily. "I won't resume eating humans if Sookie dies without me. I _will_ kill myself the moment I feel her leave me."

He turned back into me and licked along my hairline, making goose bumps break out everywhere. "_Don't_," he punched the word, "leave me."

I wanted to push him away and pull him closer. His possessive nature was wound so tight I could barely breath. At the same time, not having him right next to me felt like taking a sobriety test on cliff's edge. I chose not breathing and curled into him.

From my Eric lean-to, I held my hands out to Claudine. "I'd like the book back, please," I asked politely.

At this, she shook her head hard and clutched it tighter. "No. This tome has been missing from our world for many centuries. I don't know how the vampire queen obtained it, but it cannot stay here. We risk our secrets leaving it in your hands."

"The girl wants it," Eric spoke softly. "Give it to her or I'll take it from you."

The air instantly grew heavier with magic and gold hues. The essence of Fae increased tenfold around us. Eric's mindset fell a few more notches into animal impulse, snarling and pawing and snorting my scent. My eyes widened with fear. I knew what was coming.

"Wait! Don't go! I take it back. You can have it. Just..." I watched as the air swirled around my kin, my face crumpling with disappointment. I had so many more questions. She couldn't just leave! I gave Eric another solid push and prepared to beg her to stay. If she popped away now, I wasn't sure if she'd ever deign to come back if Eric was going to threaten her with bodily harm.

She stood impassively. The sphere of magic around her didn't shrink, but it didn't evaporate, either. She was listening, but she wasn't going to wait around for Eric to pounce, either. I did the only thing I could think of. I took Eric's hand from my waist, kissed his fingertips, and froze him.

In our bond, Eric went ballistic. Every fear he'd ever entertained about me - scaring me, killing me, losing me to someone else, dying because he couldn't protect me - exploded in his head as I held him inanimate. He fought against my hold, his muscles going rigid against his invisible captivity. But his struggles, just like in the meadow, were useless. I sent my apologies silently and turned to Claudine.

"Lover," he hissed at me. "Let me go."

"One second," I promised, not looking at him.

Claudine was clearly impressed. Her transport sphere withered and vanished, her expression full of approval. "You have learned to Still. Excellent."

I really, _really_ wished I'd tried to read more of that damn book. "Still?"

"The telekinetic ability to capture objects with your mind," she spelled out.

Eric roiled against my hold like a ham-strung tiger. There was no danger of him breaking free, but at the same time, the vampiric power fighting against my fairy ability was truly astounding. I leaned up against his motionless chest and kissed his lips softly. "You can't threaten her," I tsked gently. "We need her."

"Let me_ go_, Sookie."

I turned my head. "Will you stay?" I asked her. "Please?"

She looked from me to my very pissed-off vampire, then back again before nodding. "The book goes with me," she replied. "No discussion."

"Sure," I nodded quickly. "Whatever, just...just don't go yet."

"Very well."

I released Eric's hand. My Stilling, as Claudine called it, vanished. I felt him uncoil from my invisible harness, furious at me and fit to be tied. Again. I raised a finger before he could break the peace. "Stay calm," I warned. "Or I'll do it again."

He opened his mouth to argue. I pressed my finger against his chest. Come Hell or high water, he was going to behave. He looked down at it, then closed his mouth again, docking his heart-shaped fangs against his lower teeth. "Fine."

Super. I retracted my finger and returned to the one section of the book I did remember reading. One that Claudine was clearly very happy to ignore.

"What the hell is a scion?" I asked.


	29. Chapter 29

**A/N**: Holy freakin' crap! Another long period when I didn't update and feel like a horrible person. I blame the holidays, the roadtrips, the baby, and the in-laws. Like I said, I can't STAND writing in front of people. I need to be totally alone. God, why didn't I grow up to be a drinking loner like all the great writers did? I'll try to be better about my updates now, I swear. Special apologies to Xia. I promised you 48 hours, I delivered in 36. (Smacks own wrists.) Eric's POV.

_Blood. Bloodbloodbloodbloodblood._

It danced in Sookie. The air fucking throbbed with it and created a high-pitched drone in my ears. Sookie and the full fairy were talking, her irritating, pink cupcake dress fluttering in the morning breeze, but all I heard was muffled noise. My fangs and my cock were so stiff, it felt like all three were going to crack under the stimulus.

I put my hands on my mate, hoping to quell the need to break her in half and feast on the fountain of blood that would erupt. Warm, silky skin met my fingertips and made me groan with pleasure. My eyes rolled. Her smell was so sweet that bloody tears threatened to fill them.

Unaware, she continued her conversation like she wasn't in serious fucking trouble. Mild irritation arced towards me. She was annoyed that I couldn't leave her alone. I, in turn, was annoyed at Claudine. She needed to leave. She needed to leave and Sookie needed to be naked. She also needed to hook an IV directly into from my arm to hers to take my blood, because I was about ready to take a rivers of hers and I didn't want her passing out from blood loss.

Almost ready to kill the fairy, I rose up from my lover's throat enough to join the conversation. I snapped at Claudine and asked the only question I gave a fuck about.

After some prerequisite snitting, she answered. Sookie would now live as long as myself. As a bonus, I could no longer injure her. And she would remain as she was- young and beautiful. Edible only by me.

I didn't even question how such miracles were possible.

My mind roared with triumph and I dove back for her throat, fully planning to live out the rest of my life plastered against her skin, drinking and fucking and laughing my ass off with her. My pleasure flooded over Sookie's anxiety, completely drowning it out. Her initial objections to becoming immortal were normal. Many vampires had them, as well. Invariably, those objections disappeared once they experienced the joy of feeding for the first time, or running, or seeing and hearing the world around them with more clarity than their human senses have ever allowed. Youth and power always won out over the paltry notion that all people should eventually die.

Correction: _Most_ people should eventually die. The extraordinary should live. Forever.

Sookie had joined those ranks. And what's more, she'd snuck into them without relinquishing her beating heart and charming humanity. Was it her god or mine that had granted me this? Regardless, I would pray to them all and thank them.

Sookie continued to tremble in my arms, frightened of this glorious news.

She asked for her book back. The fairy refused. I insinuated she best do as my lover asked. I had no issue with killing the woman. Just rip her throat out and let her bleed out, her priceless blood watering the lawn as the light died in her eyes.

Fear spiked in Sookie and the air around the fairy grew thick. I prepared to move faster than the fairy could disappear, but then the unthinkable happened. In a panic, Sookie kissed my fingers, and froze me.

The animal inside me went crazy, howling and snarling as it fought madly against her hold. "Lover," I hissed. "Let me go." I roared in frustration, my arms and legs almost popping under the strain of my will against hers.

Her eyes were trained on her kin. "One second," she promised me.

_Now_, I snarled silently. _Now! Now! Now! Now!_

Smugness filled Claudine's expression as she took in my helplessness. Bitch. "You've learned to Still. Excellent." No fucking shit. Sookie rhymed with cookie, and a smart cookie she was at that. I had no illusions that she wouldn't pick up every Fae trick there was to learn. That still didn't mean she got to use them against me. I hissed openly at Claudine, furious that she was party to my weakness.

Sookie kissed me again. "You can't threaten her. We need her."

"Let me _go_, Sookie."

Sookie took twenty seconds longer than she should have to assure the fairy she could keep the tome and beg her not to pop away. In those twenty seconds, I projected to her that her gentle introduction to ass fucking was nothing compared to what she was in for, now that she had Stilled me a second time, especially since she'd done so in front of a potential enemy. Stilling me while she sucked my cock was one thing, Stilling me to assuage an overbearing sprite was another.

Once the _I Dream of Genie_ bitch was content with Sookie's promises, she released me. My body unfurled from its prison, my arms itching to arc their full wingspan and smash the fairy's head between my hands.

"Stay calm. Or I'll do it again," Sookie warned me. My mate truly had balls as big as her tits.

She would learn the full extent of my displeasure in private. For now, I retracted my fangs and complied. _For now_. "Fine."

Satisfied that she'd tamed me sufficiently, she turned to the haughty waif and asked a question. The word she used had the power to Still me all on its own.

"What the hell is a scion?"

The color in Claudine's golden skin paled. Her own fluid grace froze and she clutched the book as though it might deflect us. "I...I'm afraid that I'm not able to give you that answer. There's much you don't under-,"

"Cut the crap," Sookie clipped, stomping her foot in frustration. "You _said_ it the minute you saw me. And I remember that word from the book. Some prophesy of the Fae blah blah something omen of amelioration and two beating hearts? Blah blah?" Her brow arched expectantly.

Claudine paled further, her eyes lowering to the ground.

_A scion? What the hell was she talking about?_

"Amalgamation," Claudine corrected quietly. "The Omen of Amalgamation."

My eyes flickered over the tome again. "Answer her question," I said. "Why did you call her a scion?"

It didn't surprise me to hear that the book contained such a verse. In my many years, I had heard such predictions amongst other supes. The werepanthers had their ghost daddy myth. Some werewolves believed an Alpha would be delivered onto them and unite them across the world as a single pack. Even several of the demon species believed their would be a Moses-like savior with horns who would materialize and turn their dark, angry lives into a Dinseyland of candy and blood. Vampires had no such belief. Each of us were progenies, the scion of the maker who chose us. We needed no Moses. The promised land was _any_ land with warm bodies.

Still, I had not seen this prophesy in the tome. Another reason I wanted to snatch it from the fairy. _  
_

The fairy took a short, shaking breath, letting her gaze drift cautiously back to Sookie. Or rather, Sookie's hips.

"You don't understand," she whispered. "Something has happened. Something very... wrong. It cannot be and I must return and consult with the others-,"

"You'll do no such thing," I informed her. "You will answer her, fairy. What the fuck are you talking about? And quit stalling."

With that, she gave a delicate snort of exasperation. Clearly, she did not take kindly to my tone. Like I gave a fuck. If she attempted to pop away now, I'd make she left at least one limb behind.

Sookie felt my musings. Rather than get angry, she simply ran her fingertips over my arm. Small electrical currents trailed over my skin at her touch, the fine hairs standing up straight at her affection. Much like the rest of me. A contented grunt pushed out of my chest without my permission. Sookie smiled softly. She was slowly losing her shyness at loving displays in front of others. Her fingers came to a halt at my wrist and closed over it gently. Did she want to keep her hands on me, in case she needed to Still me again? I smirked despite my anger at the thought.

Claudine's attention had not wandered from Sookie's body.

"Answer!" I barked.

She flinched. "All right!" she cried with equal fervor, reeling back and pacing away from us in frustration. She shook the book, strangling it. "There is a prophesy. An ancient prophesy. It foretells of a Coming, of a Scion created from the purest Light who would wield untold power. It's...it's said that not only would the Scion defy mortality...he...he..." She stopped pacing, palming the tome with baleful eyes. "He would defy death in all forms."

Sookie shook her head, confused. "A fairy that couldn't die? Couldn't be killed? By anything?"

Claudine nodded slowly at the book.

"Wow," Sookie breathed. "But...why? I mean... what's the whole story? An unkillable fairy who...what? Saves the fairies from vampires? Or unites their factions? Leads them into the desert?"

I snorted. Clearly, my lover and I thought along the same lines.

There was a lost, almost frightened look at the ancient creature's face that did not sit well with me. "It isn't known, cousin. Only that a perfect cataclysm of events would need to precipitate his arrival."

Useless. Utter, literal fairytale nonsense. "And you believe Sookie to be this unkillable Frankenfairy?" I posed blandly.

Her eyes narrowed with intense dislike. "Don't be stupid. Sookie's Light is not pure. Golden and beautiful, but not pure. All fairies' Lights reflect slight colors. She is not the Scion."

Sookie stomped her foot again, mirroring my anger at this woman's cagey bullshit. "Then why the hell did you bring it up?"

"Because," she whispered, gesturing to Sookie once again. "Another Light illuminates you now. Your Radia shines brightly in Eric. But another... a new Radia... has surfaced here." She reached out and brushed her fingertips against the front of Sookie's shorts. Sookie flinched, taking a step back, away from the caress.

"It is clear," Claudine continued in a hushed voice. "A Light with no color. No color and strong." She looked at us both fearfully. "Very strong."

Sookie took a slow, wet drag of air. I could almost hear her thinking without the benefit of being in her mind. For my part, I simply stared at her godmother with distant pity. Clearly, this magical creature had lost her mind. I arrived at this conclusion and accepted it with no trouble. It happened often enough. Immortals who eventually lived out their own sanity. I wondered vaguely if the post of fairy godmother was more of an occupation than a family tie. I hoped so, as Sookie was going to need a replacement once the Fae community sectioned this woman and gave her a nice, unpoppable padded room.

She_ had_ to be crazy. She was insinuating that Sookie was pregnant. And not only pregnant, but pregnant with the Second Coming. She was staring at my cock's favorite place on earth and seeing the Messiah. While I agreed Sookie's pussy was Heaven, it was time to state the obvious.

"What you're suggesting is ludicrous, fairy. Sookie cannot carry, as she is bonded to a vampire. You know this. Idiot little human toddlers know this. Stop upsetting my mate with your biblical bullshit."

The whimsical woman almost spat in my direction, such was her contempt. "Do not lecture me on what is possible, vampire."

"I state a matter of fact. Vampires are sterile."

"Vampires are _incompatible_ with _humans_. That is not the same thing."

I snorted. "We are incompatible with all beings. There is no exception." Honestly. This woman and I were too old to be discussing the ABCs of our world.

Sookie's voice was small and distant when she spoke from my arms. "But we are the first."

I looked down at her blonde head, cooling my heated tone and nudging her gently. Her eyes were glassy, as if she were suddenly far away. "What?" I asked.

She looked to Claudine. "The other day, right here on the grass... you said we were the first fairy and vampire to bond. Isn't that right?"

The woman nodded.

Sookie looked up at me with a startled, hollowed look on her face. "We're the only fairy-human-vampire couple in the whole world."

I shook my head harder, annoyed that Claudine was infecting her with this crap. I looked at her accusingly. "We are not Man and Woman in the garden of Eden, goddammit. I'm not a man at all."

"Magic is not beholden to your limited understanding of genetics," she replied dryly. "I tell you only what I see. My cousin is Lit with a Light not her own. And it is perfect."

I saw nothing but a baby tee and shorts with a limited lifespan. Her Jesus sighting in my lover's womb carried as much consequence as his appearance to other morons in clouds and hard water stains.

"But..." Sookie objected in the same small voice. I could feel her confusion rising up into a distant wall of panic that was beginning to gain speed as it slowly made its way towards her. "But... the book! The book said something! Something about two beating hearts, remember? In order to make a third? If the Scion needs beating hearts to be created, then it's NOT possible. Eric is dead. He might be warm, but his heart is stone still and I can tell you that for a fact."

Sookie beamed up at me, confident that she'd just put the matter to rest and Claudine could now exit left to the nearest crazy house. The little gap between her teeth flashed endearingly at me.

A small, cold finger reached out and touched the warm marrow of my spine. I inhaled on instinct.

My unbeating heart clenched in my chest. It had a secret, you see. A small, innocent secret, so inconsequential that I'd never even bothered to confide it to my loving little tinkerbell.

Claudine didn't open the tome to confirm Sookie's recollection of the phrasing. Apparently, she knew it to be true. She merely watched me, waiting for me to explain. She _knew_, that bitch. She was so sure of her reading of Sookie's new, mysterious Light, that clearly I must have an explanation that accounted for this snag in the wording.

I made my mouth work very carefully. The words that formed felt like undetonated bombs. "Two beating hearts, Claudine?" I asked cautiously. "Is this true? Does Sookie remember correctly?"

She still made no move to open the large book. She nodded again. "Yes," she confirmed. "_Of Bonde unique cometh the Scion," _she recited. _ "Prophesied of Fae, Augury of the invisible world.__ The Omen of Amalgamation, the twist, the deed of Equalibrium_  
_Of beating hearts twain, come one. From the once, come thrice."_

My vampiric memory seized the words and stored them for all eternity under "Holy Fucking Shit". That file had grown considerably larger in the last two weeks.

Sookie's brow creased with confusion at my mind's upheaval while Claudine cocked her head and waited for my verbal grenades to lose their pins.

I looked down at my darling angel. "When we make love, your Light restores me." I traced her jaw lovingly. "For one single beat, I am a living man."

Her frown deepened. A blush crept into her cheeks. Affectionate displays were one thing. She blanched at discussing sex in front of family. "But-,"

"You've shot me many times, lover," I cut in gently. "In your arms, I am more alive than I've ever been, even more than when I actually lived."

"You never said anything."

"The act was so brief, and seemed such a small thing. Coming inside of you lays me to waste. You burn me inside-out until there's nothing left of me but ashes and joy. What's a single heartbeat compared to such devastation?"

Her blush rose into her hairline and she turned into my chest and away from Claudine. I had embarrassed her. The admission cost me nothing, however. The truth was that my occasional beating heart didn't even make the top ten of amazing occurrences in my connection with Sookie. It was novel, to be sure, as if a butterfly fluttered briefly in my chest, but it couldn't compare to the other delights she'd introduced me to.

Now, I looked down at her with a dawning fear that perhaps those beats had created more than just butterfly ghosts.

I set Sookie carefully to one side and leaned purposefully towards Claudine. She flinched, retreating one step.

I spoke slowly. "Are you saying that Sookie carries my child?"

She blinked between the two of us. Sookie's pulse shot up. She gasped softly. The word 'child' settled over the three of us.

The fairy swallowed. She too spoke slowly. "I do not know."

"You _cannot_ be serious," Sookie spoke up with more force than she had for the entire conversation. "That's just Bedlamite, bizarro, batshit crazy."

I didn't drop my gaze from the fairy, although Sookie's alliteration distracted me slightly. "What do you mean, 'you don't know'?"

"The Light of the Scion resides in her, vampire. I cannot say if an actual child holds that Light. The prophesy tells of no child. Neither vampires nor fairies procreate in that fashion. But Sookie is mostly human. The Light is in her womb and nowhere else. Both of your hearts were beating as you consummated your union. It is a natural assumption that your bonded carries your child."

"_Fuck_ that," Sookie sputtered. "Nuts to your child theory, or miniature fanged fairy, or whatever you're suggesting. I'll tell you what I tell incompetent sales people, Claudine. I wanna speak to your manager." Her eyes were unnaturally bright as she poked her finger into the book that guarded her godmother's chest. "I wanna talk to Mab."

I blinked rapidly. "The fairy queen? She is real?"

Claudine ignored me. "Out of the question, given your last visit. She feels much anger at your desertion."

Sookie's visit. She had yet to tell me anything about her time there.

Her lips pursed. "You're the one throwing Scions around, lady. I'm pretty sure she'll want to weigh in on this, plus I want a second opinion."

As did I. I was still fairly convinced that Claudine was mad. Not only was a second opinion required, I was also keen to meet this queen. Until thirty seconds ago, she had been a fictional character in stories so ancient, they made the Grimm brothers look like the Cohen brothers. Tales of her power were rivaled only by tales of her cruelty. If Sookie had already met her, I was eager to ask her if the stories were true, and if so, how had my lover walked away from her displeasure without punishment. Or, if she had been punished, ask her if she would like _another_ queen's heart presented to her as penance for not protecting her. She had not been mine at the time, but that was irrelevant. Anyone who injured Sookie could be sure that I would string their dead heart along with the others and decorate her fucking Christmas tree with them, if that was her wish.

Claudine, ignorant of my thoughts, mulled over Sookie's reasonable request before assenting.

"Very well. I shall speak to her majesty."

"Quickly," I replied. "This absurd possibility must be dealt with immediately. I have enough to contend with regarding Sookie's safety."

Her mind brushed mine dismissively. "I'm fine," she spoke aloud. "Don't be silly."

I ignored her. Claudine bowed fractionally to us, took a deep breath, and popped away.

Sookie gasped as I tore her shorts from her body and threw her to the ground without ceremony. I'd already forgotten what we'd been discussing. I'd already forgotten Claudine had been with us at all. Fairy magic glittered in the air and amplified in Sookie. Bad girl, smelling so good and dressing so slutty. She had this coming. For several reasons.

"Now," I began softly as she stared up at me with wide eyes. "Which offense would you like to pay for first?"


	30. Chapter 30

**A/N**: OMG OMG OMG! You awesome, bee-YOU-tiful people have nominated this story for a Fangreaders' Fangie! And not just one Fangie, but two! The Sookie Stackouse and the Adele Stackhouse awards! I cannot believe it. I am up against the best of the best, which makes me feel like the honored old fraud that I am. Sincere thanks to the who nominated me, and thanks to anyone who goes to their website to vote. (http:/fangreaders-hall-of-fame (dot) blogspot (dot) com) I'm so proud I could burst. Air kisses. Sookie's POV.

I stood shaking on the grass, the sun starting to grow warm on the top of my head. Claudine was gone. There was nothing except Eric beside me, his pulsing desire growing even crazier as my godmother's residual magic shimmered in the air.

You know those machines at the batting cages? The ones that throw pitch after pitch to help you hone your swing? The last fifteen minutes had kinda felt like that. I stood in front of her like an idiot without a bat and took each fastball right to the face. _Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!_

I was going to live indefinitely. _Thwack!_

I was going to stay twenty-six forever. _Thwack!_

Anyone who tried to separate Eric and I would meet an ugly fight. _Thwack!_

And the line drive that flew out of left field? I might be preggo (_Thwack_!) with Eric's vampairy baby. _THWACK!_

What the fucking_ FUCK?_

The whole thing was so ridiculous that I wanted to laugh until tears streamed down my face.

Then suddenly she was gone and I was half-naked on the ground. _Thwack!_

Eric towered over me, his normally light eyes almost onyx with lust as residual fairy dust made him drunk and unpredictable. His blonde head was sunlit from behind and made him look like a sinister angel. He took an aggressive step forward, and on instinct, I set one palm back, inching away. Perhaps _unpredictable_ was the wrong word. I knew exactly what he wanted.

Despite feeling overwhelmed, I gave him a tremulous smile. "I liked those shorts."

"As did I."

He was always roughest with the things he liked best. "We should probably talk."

He shook his head once. "Later."

My other palm reached back and I crab-walked backwards another step. I was still barefoot. All I had on was a pair of black lace panties and a baby tee. I felt like every naked, stupid, devirginized girl in B horror films, the ones who meet sticky, screaming ends fifteen minutes into the movie.

His head cocked to one side as he caught the scent of my arousal at the thought. Dropping to his knees, he knuckled towards me, driving every thought from my head except that I'd been a very, very bad girl.

He crawled forward one pace.

I retreated the same distance.

God, he was so scary looking with the wild glint in his eyes as he glanced at the panties and shirt. I could hear his brain calculating the quickest, most efficient means of disposal. A clothing serial killer.

I guess I'd have to have a panic attack about eternal youth and maybe-babies later. Right now, I simply had to take my medicine.

I licked my lips. "You said something about offenses? What, pray tell, have I done to offend you?"

He reached out and snatched my ankle. I cried out, helpless as he slowly dragged me back. He didn't stop until I was halfway underneath him. I briefly thought about struggling, but what was the point? I felt my pulse explode and my breath hitch. I was in big trouble.

"You," he walked his fingers over the front of my panties, "are going to tell _me_." I flinched and gasped as his fingertips struck haphazardly over my clit. Suddenly a loud rip tore the air and my t-shirt was gone. My breasts spilled out, bare and glossy from my recent shower. His mind rose even larger in mine, dark and hungry. My thoughts weren't my own as I became hopelessly aroused by tight and hot and wet.

I jutted my chin defiantly. "Not a damn thing," I denied hotly. "I was nothing but polite, just like my momma taught me."

He leaned down slowly and took one of my pearled nipples into his mouth. I groaned long and husky as he sucked and nibbled. I bit my lip and chanted silently, _Don't give in, Don't give in, Don't give in. _

His fingers didn't stop. They kept skating over the rough-soft material over my most sensitive area, teasing me with the knowledge that he could rip the soaked scrap of lace to shreds with a flick. He switched to my other breast, listening to my internal mantra with amused disdain. Oh lordy, my momma would have fainted dead away.

"You're mistaken," he replied. "And you're going to answer for it. You're going to lie here and list _all_ your misdeeds while I lick you out," he said conversationally. "If you wish for relief, you'll apologize for each and every one of them."

My throat closed up and I gasped for air, my eyes rolling as my treacherous body arched up into his threat. I cursed it, furious that it gave up with so little a fight. My nipples felt like little white flags, waving frantically and offering themselves in reparation. My thighs fell open as he crawled between them, fully clothed. The scratch of fabric and stubble over my eager skin made my whole reproductive system throb and clench.

Stupid Everlast Bond and maybe-baby. They were clearly fucking with my determination. They amplified all the girly bits in me and ordered them to spread wide and submit to getting pawed.

Eric paid no heed to my struggles.

"And then," he continued, tonguing the notch between my collarbone as his hips bumped roughly into mine. "You're going to get on your knees and suck my forgiveness out of me."

I moaned at his vulgarity.

"No, I won't," I argued lamely. Yeah, right. I could already taste his cock in my mouth and was furious that it wasn't in there already.

He chuckled low at my lie. Flattening his tongue, he painted a quick line straight down my body and stabbed it against my panties.

I flailed as electric bolts exploded down my legs. "Eric!"

"Lover," he stabbed hard again. I whimpered pathetically, hoping he'd take pity on me. Stupid, _stupid_ Sookie. I should have remembered that I'd Chosen a pitiless man. "Start at the beginning," he ordered, threading his fingers into the lace and ripping it open, one delicate strand at a time. "Swallow your pride. Spread your legs. And tell me how you wronged me."

My underwear was history. It was just as well. They were dripping wet.

"I...I didn't do anyth-,"

"Touch your tits," he growled softly, hovering just over where I needed him most. "Display them. Remind me of how fucking beautiful they are."

"Ungh," I moaned, arching up into his words. My hands went to my breasts with no shame, desperate to relieve the ache I felt in them. I cupped them, my middle fingers sliding over my nipples as I offered them to him. This pleased him. He rewarded me with a small Fuck-Me smile before he lowered his lips to me. "I don't tire," he reminded me. I could feel the cool air stirring around his words on my hot skin. "I'll eat you for hours, Sookie, except I won't let you come. Don't beg. Don't reason. Just confess. I am a cruel, _hard_ man." Threat finished, he descended. My pussy was so ready that it spasmed in disappointment when he bypassed it at the last second. I screamed in sweet frustration as he bit my inner thigh with his blunt teeth, sucking and nibbling the poor, unsuspecting nerves there, leaving - no shit- a hickey on me.

"Eeeeric!" I screamed again, trying desperately to escape the overstimulation. He held me down with ease.

"Tell me!" he barked, sinking his fingers into my ass to keep me still. He ran his tongue lightly over my folds. It would take a million years of that to get me off.

"Bastard," I croaked. My back arched completely until I was offering him everything on a wet Sookie platter.

"Tell. Me."

"Ugh!" I cried in frustration. "I...I Stilled you. I Stilled you after you told me I wasn't allowed to."

Gratitude shot from my pussy right into the roots of my hair as Eric began licking in earnest. The pointed tip of his tongue struck my clit repeatedly while his fingertips petted my opening softly. I sobbed with pleasure.

But it didn't last. No sooner had I admitted it when his movements began to slow. Panicked, I spoke again. "I didn't listen! You took me in the ass to punish me last time, but I didn't listen! I took away your ability to protect me. I...oh God...please, baby...I need to learn my lesson."

That did it. I didn't mean a damn word of it, but it did the trick. The delicious pressure returned and a mammoth orgasm was coming to pay a visit. But my addled brain knew that orgasm would never make it unless I continued to repent.

"I wore shorts to seduce you," I confessed, gasping as a single finger slipped into my core. I clenched it gratefully and made a strange trilling, happy noise. Wanting another finger, I elaborated. "I wanted you to see my legs and remember how they feel wrapped around your ass. I...oh, fuck...I wanted you to wonder if I'd done it on purpose. God, baby please! I need you so bad. Want you sososo much."

He broke suction over my clit and turned his face to the side. I shrieked as he rubbed his stubble over the whole area, blowing my brains out with the overkill sensation of a cheese grater on silk. My body went rigid and I screamed as the intensity bordered on exquisite pain.

I almost unspooled right there. Damn him, this wasn't fair! I was getting mauled by his deliciously fuckable body, but not actually fucked. I hated him so much! And there was nothing I could do except offer more concessions.

"I smell good," I shot in the dark. "I'm a fucking honeypot and it drives you crazy."

I got my second finger. My eyes went blind as his lips closed over my clit and gave me a deep, tonguing suck that rivaled the world's best blowjob.

"Ungh!" I cried. "_I_ drive you crazy. When you met me, you thought sticking your cock and your fangs into me would help, but it only makes it worse. You want me so bad, and it's never going to go away. You can fuck me a million times, but it'll never be enough. I broke you without even trying. You _broke_...for a fairy waitress in Bumfuck, Louisiana."

Hearing myself voice his biggest, deepest weakness gave me the rush of power I needed. My orgasm torpedoed into my body, wracking me from skin to marrow, before blowing me completely apart. I screamed as my core nearly broke his fingers off in its desperation to keep him inside me. I felt his own need batter my weakened senses. He was just gearing up and I was barely conscious.

_Yes_, I heard him seethe internally. _ Broken. Useless. Weak. Lovesick. My lttle fairy angel. Found my soul in Bumfuck, Louisiana. _

I moaned, unsure if I was hearing actual thoughts, or just jagged pieces of his mood.

Needing an anchor to help me come down from my high, I reached out and gripped his biceps. There was absolutely no give in his flesh. It was like grabbing hold of two solid oak bannisters. "So strong," I whispered mindlessly. "I fucking _love_ how strong you are."

"Not strong," he muttered, prowling up my body and towards my face. "Crippled. Ruined."

When I opened my eyes, I found love and accusation looking down at me. I smiled dopily. "You're a day-walking vampire with the best blood source in town. Hardly the salt mines."

He snorted softly. "You. Owe me several apologies."

"Ain't gonna happen."

"They will. And then you'll suck my cock until I forgive you."

His conviction had all my bare skin bucking into his rough clothes. "You seem awfully sure."

But he was already lifting away, taking all his lovely textures and warmth with him as he stood up and slowly undid his belt. Through his jeans, I could see the angry outline of his cock down one pant leg, so hard it was ready to split the seems. His expression was all business. I was just another red mark in his ledger that needed to blow her way back into the black. I owed him. Eric always got what he was owed.

I bit my lip and pouted on principle. With my lower lip stuck out, I slowly got to my knees in front of him. "I'm still not sorry," I snipped at him. I was always happy to give him head. I was less thrilled if he was going to see it as a mea culpa. I'm sure he could feel as much in my head. I was projecting pretty loudly.

His own mind betrayed nothing. He simply reached out and caressed a piece of my hair, looping it playfully. "Too many words are in your mouth and not enough dick."

I inhaled sharply.

He took himself out, enough wood to ram his way through a drawbridge. "Suck me."

Despite my indignation, I couldn't tear my eyes away from it. I don't think I've ever seen anything as frightening and vulnerable at the same time. He was a pale pillar of solid rock, and yet, he was exposed. I'm sure I was one in a thousand girls that had seen him fully clothed with his dick swinging out, but I knew that everything he did with me had a newness about it that made us both almost shy. _Almost_. I wet my lips. "You're beautiful."

He blinked. "You're stalling."

I reached up and traced the thick vein running the underside of his shaft. Gently. It would take a million years to get _him_ off like that. I brought my tongue very slowly to the head, touching it carefully with a soft, introductory lick. "I love you."

I heard his teeth grinding. He wanted to fuck. I closed my eyes and let my tongue wander limply over the smooth bell. No lips. "Dontchu love me back?"

His willpower took a beating. He hated denying me. "I said quit talking." His voice was clear, but not forceful like he wanted. "Do as I say."

I splayed my hands wide over his loosened jeans and pulled them down slowly, until they pooled at his shins. I kissed his penis, pressing my lips chastely against his slit. "You _don't_ love me," I pouted in a small, sad little voice.

Fury rose up in him. I was fulla shit and he knew it. But he also couldn't stand the cruel little word darts that sliced into his heart and made him bleed. I was kissing _and_ hitting below the belt.

"_Mean_ girl," he hissed softly.

I opened my mouth and took a single inch, painting it thoroughly with my tongue, then pulling back. I smothered my glee and tried to manufacture as much dejection as I could muster, slathering his harsh façade with it, blatantly trying to erode his lesson. "Poor Sookie," my voice wallowed in self-pity. "Her vampire doesn't care about her. He only wants a blow."

I didn't give him a chance to deny it. Instead, I grabbed his hips and swallowed him whole. He went rigid under my hands, his hips bucking and his stance automatically broadening. Good to know I could still take a Viking by surprise.

"_Sookie_." My name was a plea. A denial. A refusal that I was anything other than fucking adored.

I went crazy. No slow and sensual for Eric. Instead he got hot, horny, slobbering fangirl all over his dick. My eyes were wide as I locked them on his. I was choking myself on him. And how. They could chip it on my tombstone, for all I cared.

_Here Lies Sookie Stackhouse_  
_Friend, Fairy, Fangirl_  
_Died As She Lived- Deep-throating Eric_

His groans were getting me excited again, despite my train wreck orgasm. His girth was making my cheeks sore. His brain was pulsing with how much he loved me. Even something as silly as my teasing had made him forget his disciplinary plan and had him gushing devotion into our bond. He buried his hands in my hair, cradling my head. Fucking. _Adored_. Me.

My hands Lit up and I moaned.

As usual, my Light wanted to show Eric just how appreciated his affection was. I had almost no control over it, it was like trying to direct a fire hose all by myself. I tightened my hold on his hips, my light bulb hands tantalizing his skin.

He whimpered his thanks. "Yes," he purred happily. "Fuck yes."

Buzzing with electricity, I ran my fingers down the powerful stacks of his legs, ghosting my nails behind his knees, relishing in his flinch as I tickled him.

It gave me an idea.

I read somewhere that the knees have more nerve endings in them than any other body part. Getting shot there was supposed to be liquid agony. Listening to him moan and growl as I swallowed him over and over, I wondered if the opposite applies with getting shot by a fairy dose of orgasm.

_Don't blink_, I told myself.

Sucking hard on the downstroke and matching every atom of love that he gave me, I shot him directly in both kneecaps.

I didn't blink. I saw the whole thing. Light detonated in his legs, illuminating them before rocketing up both thighs, where they merged into a ball and propelled up his torso and into his heart. Every muscle in his body turned to steel.

His head shot back. "SOOKIIIIIE!" he bellowed at the sky.

He exploded in my mouth. I remembered enough to keep my cheeks soft, using my tongue to clean him lovingly as he came in hard, gasping thrusts. I brought my hands back up to his hips to keep him for falling backwards. He was trembling so hard, I started to worry that maybe I'd actually hurt him.

I tapped our bond and gently prodded his mind. What I found didn't allay my fears. He was a total blank. As he stood, gasping for air on instinct, I couldn't feel anything in him except shock, like I'd short-circuited his whole system.

With one last, gentle pull, I released him from my mouth, kissing just above his pubic bone. "Eric?"

I yelped when he collapsed to his knees in front of me, his face even paler than usual as he stared at me, his mouth a little round O.

I laughed nervously. "So. Am I forgiven?" Normally I wouldn't have conceded that I need forgiveness, but right now, I just wanted him to talk.

He closed him mouth. Then grabbed my face and pressed my lips into his, muttering the whole time. "Love you," kiss. "Need you," kiss. "Yours," kiss. "Kill for you...die for you," kiss. "Anything you ask for...yours...ask," kiss. "Take," kiss.

I smiled into his mouth. "I'm still waitin' on my daisies."

Vague disbelief arced from him. He still wasn't one-hundred percent yet. "Not enough," he rasped. "Ask. A castle. A country. The moon. The oceans. Every diamond on earth. Ask."

I chuckled wryly, pushing him onto his bare ass and climbing onto his partially-clothed lap. I knew he was dead serious. What he could afford, he would give me. What he couldn't, he'd steal. Even the moon wasn't safe from his clever cupidity.

"Well," I touched my chin, thinking it over, while my other hand traveled into his hair and proceeded to set his nerve endings atingle. The purr of a well-fed lion answered my petting. Heh. "I suppose, after I get my daisies, I'd liiiiiike..." I looked at him coyly. "Dinner? A movie?"

"Fucking hell, little girl," he growled softly. "I offer you the world and you want steak and popcorn?"

"I imagine you've got access to some pretty awesome steak and popcorn."

"The Hope Diamond. It's yours."

"Ew. Pass."

"A Ferrari."

"On my dirt road? With that low carriage?"

"The governor's mansion."

I laughed out loud. "It's in Baton Rouge."

He put his arms around me and huffed. "Ridiculous," he muttered.

I rubbed his arms and burrowed tighter into them. "I have you. What else do I need?"

He nosed under my chin and inhaled deeply. "You are all of those things and more to me. I feel... inadequate in comparison. You won't let me equalize us. I have more money than you could ever spend. Why won't you?"

I snorted, my hand moving to stroke the nape of his neck. The collar of his t-shirt was soft. He was softer. "First of all, shut up. Second, I'm pretty sure the moon's not for sale."

"Everything's for sale."

"Kindly see my first point," I chided him.

We held each other for a little while. The sun was officially hot now. It beat on my back as we continued to rock slightly. Eric was still buried under my chin, hardly moving except when his chest inflated, inhaling my scent over and over.

I swallowed. "We need to talk now."

"Yes."

"Claudine said a mouthful."

"Agreed."

I nodded. "Can we go inside? I need new clothes." Just like I'd needed new ones every six hours since agreeing to be Eric's.

He nodded in return. Silently, he disentangled us and stood. After closing up his fly, he offered me his hand and I took it, every bit as naked as he was clothed.

Eric looked far away as he gazed at my sun-drenched skin. After taking in every last inch, he tugged my hand towards the house. "I won't live another thousand years," he said quietly. "You'll kill me long before then."


	31. Chapter 31

**A/N**: Hey folks! Okay, I just wanted to clarify that since I started this story a year ago (Holy crap!), nothing in season four was included, and thus, Sookie's crazy-ass encounter with the fairies and Mab isn't part of this. I'll use her character, but that's it. Don't forget to vote for the Fangreaders' Fangie Awards! (https:/ fangreaders (dot) blogspot (dot) com) There are so many superb stories in the competition, it's hard to choose a fave!

I really, really needed to stop offering to pay for my orgasms with this girl.

As she ran upstairs to find something to wear for the second time in as many hours, I stormed into my library, cursing my own soppiness. It was getting to the point where she could barely _touch_ me without me falling on my knees and offering her a fucking luxury liner in return. The pussiness of it disgusted me. Most of all, because I knew the next time she touched me, I'd be racking my brain, trying to think of something to top oceans and diamonds to give her. And as always, she'd roll her eyes at me, telling me to shut up and muttering something about how keeping a woman will give her nothing of substance except a fat ass. Not that she needed to worry about that. If she kept splattering my brains all over the insides of my skull like this, I'd never leave her alone long enough to pack on the pounds. It was _fucking ridiculous_. My legs were _still_ rubbery. I'd been so distracted by the talents of her hot little mouth around me that I'd almost missed the feeling of her fingers running over my thighs and shins. However, I was becoming very familiar with the tickling streak of impish curiosity she felt when pleasuring me. That was all the warning I received before she literally took me out at the knees. My sciatic nerves - the Union Pacific of all nerves - was treated to enough sexual voltage to take out a transformer as it raced up to detonate in my heart. Another forced heartbeat, another gasp on unneeded air, and I collapsed to the ground, the broken slave of a fairy who was obviously trying to kill me.

Fine. Wonderful. Let her blow sunshine up my ass in the meantime. When it finally costs me my life, my cock will have written a will asking that it be buried in Sookie's mouth. I'll notarize the fucker. It's a fitting end that the scene of my murder also be my final resting place. It's the least she could do.

Footsteps padded down the stairs and Sookie reemerged, wearing my fantasy robe. My fangs nearly severed my tongue. She had her head tipped forward as she efficiently tied her hair up in a messy, sexy bun that advertized her neck in such a way that made me want to get my cock's will written as soon as possible so I could shove it down her throat and continue my suicide by Sookie.

The shades were open. Sunlight poured into a room I'd never seen so bright. Her hair and her scent were pure wheat. She smiled sweetly as she walked by me, stretching out on my sofa, seemingly unconcerned with my hard stare or the aggressive fucking I was thinking about giving her. God only knew what she was wearing under that flowery jizz tease. Hopefully an iron chastity belt. More than likely nothing but her dagger pendant. "You okay?" she asked.

Cute. "Get dressed."

Her smile widened. "Why? I'll only end up like this again."

I glowered. "Because you look like my wettest dream and you know it. I can't concentrate when you're in it."

She snorted. "You've concentrated through two world wars, a messa civil wars, and God knows how many small fry brawls. You tellin' me there weren't robed women sprinkled in there somewhere?"

"Robed women? Thousands. Robed Sookies? Not a one."

She grew radiant under my unintentional compliment, making it even worse. Her smile was distracting under normal circumstances. But the shy pleasure she felt in my honest opinion that she was the sexiest, prettiest, most desirable creature to ever traipse into my life made me volatile. She threw her arms backward, gripping the armrest, biting her lip as the knot in her belt loosened. The laziest flick of my finger and that garment was a puddle around her body. Damn it all to hell. Surely one of the ancient books surrounding us could enlighten me as to just how a fairy could also be a siren and an ingenue rolled into one. Time to grab a bucket of ice water before I succumbed.

"You seem awfully unconcerned for a woman expecting."

She inhaled sharply and the seductive arch of her back deflated. She went limp on my sofa. Still looking sexy as fuck, much to my consternation. She bit her lip. "Dammit, Eric."

"I'm gifted, lover, but I doubt I can fuck Claudine's words from our memories."

"It's not like you to not even give it the old college try."

"We've had our time out. Now it's time to talk."

"Shit," she muttered, all hope of avoiding it gone. She pulled the panels tighter around her, biting her lip harder in thought. It was still adorable. "What happened to chaining me to your bed and making scream all day?"

"That was before your godmother informed us that you were the immortal mother of the next Moses."

Irritation filled her and she huffed as she sat upright, her back against the armrest and her knees drawn into her chest. She wrapped her arms around her bent legs, looking ruefully at me as she lay her cheek against her knees. "You don't seriously believe that, do you? I love Claudine and all, but there's no way in hell that I'm pregnant."

My brow quirked. "Sure of that, are we?"

"This ain't the time to play devil's advocate, Eric. I'm really not in the mood. Yes, I'm sure."

"We've only been together for a week. How can you be sure?"

She looked at me like I was an idiot. "Uuuh, because you're not a quarterback and I'm not a cheerleader and we're not sitting in the Planned Parenthood waiting room staring at anti-chlamydia pamphlets. This isn't some teen pregnancy scare. A vampire baby has _never_ happened. It sounds lame even saying it out loud. And you're the one with Superman senses. If I were pregnant, couldn't you smell it? Change in hormones or something?"

Yes. In theory. Pregnant women were easy to detect ordinarily. Their bodies' chemistry began changing the moment they conceived. I lifted my nose to the air and inhaled slowly. Thousands of molecules filled my nostrils. I could practically feel each one as I frisked them for changes in her fragrance. More estrogen, more blood, something. Sookie's eyes went wide as a hunted deer. I filled my chest with the scent of old parchment. Cracked leather binding. Dried ink. Expensive hardwood. Dust. Human. Woman. Sex. Fairy blood. I exhaled slowly.

I smelled no mother.

I shook my head. "Nothing. Not a human child, at any rate."

Sookie shivered and drew her legs in tighter. "Could you tell this early? Like you say, it's only a week."

I nodded, leaning to sit back on my desk. "Yes. I would know."

She let out a relieved breath. "I guess that's something."

"Is the prospect of my child so repulsive to you?"

"What? No!" she answered, her curled body turning towards me in disbelief.

I shrugged.

She shot off the couch and launched herself at me. Her speed surprised me. I was barely able to put my arms out before she dove straight into them as denial and comfort bubbled hotly from her. She thought I was upset. I gathered her up as she began to babble.

"No. No, that's not it at all! I just...I mean, it's crazy, right? We're not even talking about a baby that goes goo-goo-gaa-gaa and needs diapers and bottles and stuff! Claudine called it a Scion! Some sort of super baby made out of tempered steel with chainsaws for hands that can deflect anything from bullets to atomic bombs! And for what? To save the whales? Or help end hunger in Southeast Asia?"

I smiled. "Only Southeast Asia? With chainsaws for hands, I imagine he could easily help as far as French Polynesia."

She punched playfully into my shirt. I felt her agitation waver. "Shut up," she mumbled, craning her head all the way back so she could look at me.

Interesting that I wouldn't suffer that comment from anyone, including Pam, and yet I barely noticed now. I craned mine all the way down to rub my nose against hers. "It's a child. Not Dr. Manhattan."

"You know what I'm saying," she murmured.

"Not really. I have been alive for so long, lover. So _very_ long. Do you know how many prophecies I've heard? How many fervent believers have sworn that God was coming? Or his proxy? Or his wrath? Or his paradise? Thousands. Tens of thousands. Do you know how many I've seen come to pass?"

She shook her head slowly, even though she knew damn well. I answered anyway. "None. Not a single angel has trumpeted. Not a single locust or plague that bore a holy maker's mark. Neither the sky nor the ground have opened up and swallowed everyone whole. There was always another day. Nothing more."

Her cat appeared at the doorway. Upon seeing us, it made a beeline for Sookie's ankles, rubbing happily on her bare feet. I rubbed her back reassuringly, hoping her two Erics could ease her worry.

Pleasure simmered in her dark eyes alongside her anxiety. My hands wandered lower, massaging the flare of her hips. She bit her lip.

"So you don't think it's possible?"

"I think possibility and occurrence are two very different things. I sincerely doubt a fairy messiah is brewing in your womb."

She snorted in derision. "Who said anything about a messiah? You heard Claudine. They never bothered to give this alleged Scion a job. He's just supposed to show up and wield unlimited power, minus an actual purpose. Promote synergy like a boss, or some shit."

"A shame. I was looking forward to raising a bulletproof Moses."

"Ha! You're assuming he'll be a good guy. I could be mother to the next Anakin Skywalker."

"When we name him, we can split the difference."

The corners of her mouth quirked. "Moses Skywalker?"

"Catchy. I love it."

"No, you don't."

"_Pam_ will love it."

She giggled and buried her face in my chest. Gradually, her fears were receding, until I was finally holding a Sookie that was mostly full of good humor. When she raised her head again, she had a soft, pensive look on her face. "You know... you know it's not about the _other_ thing."

Her tone had me questioning her silently.

"About...having your baby?"

I was quiet a moment. "In what way?"

"I didn't mean to suggest that I didn't want your child."

We were venturing in to one of the many areas we had never discussed.

Sookie was young. She was loving. And she had a body that was meant for two things: me and making babies. Between my hands were beautiful hips that were _built_ to entice men with the promise of healthy children. Under the panels of that robe were two breasts that would nourish them through even the leanest winter. Her skin was sleek and supple. Her arms and legs were slender and strong. In my human days, I would have tied her to my bedding and spent every waking moment fucking her until my seed eventually took hold. It would have been inevitable. As badly as I needed her, I doubt there would have been a single month between her teens and her forties when she wouldn't have been carrying my children. They would have been toddling testaments to the fact that I couldn't go five minutes without chasing their mother down and pumping her full of my DNA.

But I was no longer human.

And Sookie was.

"Do you want children, Sookie?" I asked softly.

She burrowed harder into me, shaking her head faintly. "I want you. I want my vampire. I love kids, but nothing is more important to me than you. A life with you," she chuckled softly, "twenty lives with you...that's enough."

I couldn't help but press. "And if the prophesy is true? If I've given you a steel, power-tooled, unstoppable demigod?"

Her chuckle was louder this time and peeked at the bookcases on the opposite wall. "Then I suggest you put the expensive books on the top shelves. First editions and juice boxes don't mix."

Chuckling with her, I sat further back on the desk, turning her around and bringing her with me until she was sitting between my legs with her back against my chest. I hooked my chin over her shoulder. Both of us staring at my prolific collection, I wondered if we were both mentally rearranging the room, moving the vulnerable volumes off the bottom shelves and replacing them with _Everybody Poops_. Losing Sookie's feet, the cat meowed at us for our rude uprooting and skulked over to Sookie's sofa, where he leaped onto the middle cushion, circled, and settled. His back to us, naturally. I'd taken away his human itching post.

With slow fingers, I pulled at the yoke of her robe, baring her shoulder to me. She sighed, letting her head drop back against me, offering access.

I kissed it reverently. "What of the other...revelations? Is it true the fairy queen really exists?"

She nodded vaguely.

I gauged her mood. Gingerly, I continued. "You never told me about your absence. Were you summoned?"

She didn't stiffen. "No," she said quietly. "At first, I was simply invited. Right after you left that night, I went to see Gran. I was so miserable, I didn't want anyone except her. Claudine appeared and offered to take me away." She shrugged under my lips. "Second star to the right and straight on til morning."

The skin behind her ear was so fucking soft. I nosed it. "Was it the paradise they say it is?"

A sliver a tension infected her at last. "I suppose it's like all paradises, in that there's a catch."

"That catch being?"

"That my invitation was actually a summons, like you said. It was beautiful, but the whole place felt..." she searched for the right word.

"Artificial?" I supplied.

"Yeah," she nodded. "Artificial. Simulated. Like when you see a beautiful bouquet of flowers, but when you get closer, you realize it's just a realistic, plastic fake. Everything about the place looked like it was sprinkled with angel dust. The plants shimmered. The lakes were as shiny as mercury. The air was always warm and smelled like cookies..."

"Cookies?"

She nodded again, her hairline brushing my cheek. "At least to me. When I asked someone else, they said they smelled coconut. Another said rosemary. Claudine said it was fairy magic. In our realm, things aren't what they are, but what we wish them to be." She turned her face to look at me. "Since there aren't any secrets between us, I guess it's time to confess." She took a fortifying breath. "My name is Sookie Stackhouse, and I'm addicted to oatmeal raisin."

My face collapsed in horror. "My darling," I wound my arms around her tightly, plastering her to me. "You should have said sooner. I bought oatmeal and raisins for this kitchen. They're in this house as we speak."

Sookie, ever my playmate, went rigid with panic. "Eric! Don't you know I could cook those into my drug of choice?"

"I had no idea," I offered humbly. "To think I could've come home one evening and found you melting them together in a spoon over a Bic lighter."

She bit her lip, determined to stifle her smile. "You have to burn them. Or better yet, mix water into them and paint Pam's car. It'll take her a year to chip it all off."

"I love that I bonded to such a bitch. Along with the bitch I sired, you make a fetching set."

"If only we dispensed salt and pepper."

I lost the battle and smiled. "A great pity."

She snuggled back, laughing slightly through her nose. "Next question?"

I readjusted my hold, letting my fingers play with the loose, incompetent knot in her belt. It gave up without a fight. Little bastard. "What did she want with you?"

"Her official reason? I was being called to the principal's office. Word reached her about Bill breaching their world. He'd drunk so much of my blood, he'd accidentally shifted there while he slept. She was furious with me. I was expecting to be handed a piece of chalk and told to write 'I will not fraternize with vampires' one hundred times on the board."

_Sookie in a school girl uniform. Glasses. White cotton panties. 'I will not cocktease Eric' a hundred times on the board._

Her tone was light, but she couldn't hide from me. Sadness speared her. The queen had frightened her. My hands splayed protectively over her belly. "Did she hurt you?"

She put her hands over mine and squeezed. "No," she soothed me aloud as well as mentally. "She wasn't nice, but she wasn't cruel either. She said that I'd been stupid, that I'd endangered an already dying race by throwing myself at our worst enemy."

"And your reply?"

She smirked slightly. "I told her to mind her own damn business and that she brought it on herself by letting fairies rape humans, then leaving those baby mommas with no fucking idea about the hybrids they were carrying."

"Honestly, Sookie. Is there any monarch you _won't_ mouth off to?" My pride belied my criticism.

She jutted her chin. "Hello? American? I don't bow and I don't kiss ass. Every monarch I've met so far would starve to death in any other occupation. They're nuthin' but vain assholes and you know it."

"I do. Perhaps in a thousand years, you'll learn to hold your tongue around vain assholes with power."

She pouted, all big eyes and stuck-out lips. "The day I hold my tongue is the day you'll lose all respect for me."

She had me there.

"But she let you go?"

Vagueness filled her. "For now."

I didn't like that. But I pressed on. "Why hasn't she sent for you again? You've fraternized with an even stronger vampire. I take regular ingestions of your blood. Will she take disciplinary meassures?"

Not that I'd let her. She'd be deader than me if she so much as used colorful language in Sookie's direction.

Sookie released all of her weight to me, sighing deeply. "I would have thought so, but Claudine said no. Apparently since we have a fairy bond, it trumps any 'family objections' they might have had. It's like the godfather, nobody can say nuthin' after he speaks."

I nodded slowly.

A sleepy edge was hunting Sookie. Her mind was getting fainter as her body made itself comfortable on me. I worried that maybe she'd been forced to process too much information in one morning. That, plus limited sleep and a hundred other worries, it might all weigh too heavily on a young mind unused to dealing with multiple snafus.

"Are you tired, lover?"

She hummed. "Yeah. Sorta. I dunno, I feel like I just wanna sink into myself for awhile. The Authority. Hadley and Hunter. Seeing Mab again. Living forever. Losing the book. I need to talk to Jason and Tara. I need to call Sam and see if I still have a job after being AWOL for a week. I feel strung out, like I could sleep for a million years."

I tsked her, my hands flipping open her belt and slithering into the fabric. She inhaled at my trespass.

"We must plan," I whispered in her ear, massaging her here and there. Her chin tipped up and she moaned. She was right. There was too much on our plate. It was imperative that we use the rest of the day to prepare for any and all scenarios. Our lives depended on us staying vigilant.

She whispered my name. I kissed her neck, opening her robe. Just as I thought. Her dagger and nothing else.

Later.

We'll make our plans later.


	32. Chapter 32

A/N: I am so, SO sorry. MORE family came to visit and my muse is being a miserly bitch. Hence my sucky update record. But more importantly, I placed third for both my Fangie nominations for this story and that would **NEVER HAVE HAPPENED**, were it not for you guys. Seriously, I was up against authors who could bottle their stories and sell that shit for a million dollars, and yet somehow, I managed to place among them. I strutted like a pimp for a solid week. I love you guys. Special love going out to Xia Cheyenne for her invaluable help. Sookie's POV

Despite his errant hands and clear interest in doing something else, we talked.

True to his confession, touching me did indeed seem to calm him. His palms cupped my breasts. His fingertips played over my ribs like piano keys. They slithered lower, inching between my parted thighs. He collected each and every place that I enjoyed being touched. But he reserved his lips for speaking. A combination of surprise, pride, amusement and disappointment swirled in me as he continued to prime me while talking nothing but business. He didn't seem distracted by it at all. _Au contraire_. My body seemed to act like his keystone, the very center of his concentration. He skimmed from my nipples to my bellybutton, from my throat to the soft, blond hair below my hipbone. I wasn't a sex object. I was a Ouija board. His questions slowly became answers as he teased them out, one letter at a time.

My eyes kept closing in pleasure and my tongue tripped over a few words, but I did my best to stay on topic.

On the agenda: Eric's decision to hire supe guards for Hunter. I approved. We should monitor our dual bonds constantly, in case the fairies tried to take me to Mab while Eric was sleeping or out of range. At some point, we should continue with my training. Now that I could Still, Eric wanted to probe its limitations. Did I need to be touching the object to manipulate it? How strong was my Stilling if I could control Eric? Or could I simply control him easily because he was mine? I offered to experiment right then and there on random objects in the room, but he declined. He loved his books too much to risk them on an unwieldy fairy test, girlfriend or no. I couldn't help myself. I raised a single finger in the air and let it glow.

"Are you sure? What if I could make your entire Marlowe collection dance the Can Can?"

A large fist closed over my finger. "Perhaps Sophie Anne was right to bind you. Clearly nothing is sacred if you're threatening my books."

I willed my finger to buzz in his hand. It sounded like he'd caught a bee. He expelled a small puff of air, awed at the sensation. "You'd risk more than your books, as long as I keep blowing your mind like this," I noted.

He nodded mutely, his chin digging into my shoulder. The way his stubble scratched me made all of me shiver. My finger settled and he released it. "I'll practice outside," I conceded.

"My trees are at your disposal."

"Poor trees."

"If they truly valued their lives as my books did, they'd have something interesting written on them."

"Are you kidding? They all saw me disembowel that sycamore. They're all probably praying for Mark Twain himself to drag his skeletal ass out of his grave in New York and come sign every last one of their leaves."

"They should be praying to Ben Jonson. I would show more mercy."

"Arborcidal snob."

He chuckled.

A soft ping behind us on the desk. His computer was on email alert. With an annoyed growl, he closed my robe and set me on my feet before dismounting the desk and moving to his chair.

I smoothed the panels back into place. "Something important?" I asked.

"I never assume otherwise."

I frowned, disliking the loss of heat at my back where my warm vampire had been. "Who'd email you at nine in the morning?"

He slouched deep in his seat and moved the mouse to wake up the screen. His eyes moved so quickly over the text, it didn't really look like reading. Suddenly the bond between us went still. He didn't look up as he said, "The message was delayed. It's from the Authority."

God fuckin' dammit. If it wasn't one group of almighty crazies, it was another.

"What do they want? Is it about Hadley?"

"Not quite." He reread it before looking at me. "They have appointed a new Magister. I have been summoned, along with the other sheriffs and monarchs of seven southern states, to swear my loyalty."

"I thought you only had to do that when a new monarch was chosen."

"No. Hierarchy is crucial for vampires. We must make a show of our submission."

"Huh," I offered lamely, bending at my waist and putting my elbows on his desk, staring across at him. "When?"

"Tonight."

"What the hell? So, you were supposed to read it when you rose tonight? They'd give you zero notice like that?"

He chuckled again. This one held no warmth at all. "Giving me zero notice means I'd be forced to react without planning. There'd be no time for it. They want us all to come running, eager to please and unable to scheme."

I smirked. "Little do they know."

His gaze turned smug and predatory as he leered down his fairy's cleavage. An oily, possessive conceit slithered over the desk towards me. He _loved_ that he had me. Not only did he love me, he loved that owning me gave him a perpetual ace in the hole. I was the gift that kept on giving. I smiled back at him, my own sense of conceited ownership taking over. I hadn't done too badly, either.

"Yes," he agreed simply.

"So? Who's the new boss? Or do they reveal it in front of a panel of washed-up actors and put the whole thing on tv?"

"God fucking forbid we ever mainstream _that_ completely," he muttered, his mouse coasting and clicking at a furious pace. "The new Magister's name is not given. Another means to keep us from plotting. He or she will be named tonight." He looked up at me, scanning my robe with a clinical eye. "You will need a gown."

I blinked. _What?_

"What?"

"A gown, lover. I've bought you many clothes, but I've yet to buy you an evening dress. You'll need to look the part as my bonded companion."

I blinked again. "As in, I'm going with you?"

"I wouldn't dress you formally, then leave you at home." He looked at me like I was an idiot.

I huffed. "Well, duh. Rhetorical question. I was implying that perhaps it's not such a hot idea to wander into a vampire party smelling like a crackpipe and possibly pregnant with Mo." I pressed my tummy lightly. Eric's eyes flicked over it briefly. A sudden, surprising burst of pride shot through him, then vanished. I cocked my head. _That was weird_.

"Unfortunate, but necessary. I've registered you as my bonded. Domingo has already met you and will wonder why you're not in attendance. If you're absent, he may wonder if I've allowed you to take your cousin into hiding."

I swallowed. "You think he'll be thinking about Hadley?"

"With Sophie Anne absent, you'll hear Hadley's name whispered many times tonight."

And she was just sitting on Jason's couch as we spoke, eating greasy eggs over easy and waiting for the ax to fall. I sent a quick prayer, asking God to please keep her ass on that couch and away from trouble until we were able to sort this mess out. I stood up straight. "I guess I need to go shopping, then," I said finally.

Eric nodded. "I'll escort you."

"My ass, you will. Unless you plan to wear a burka."

"Your Light will protect me."

"Not from getting recognized, it won't. How many Shreveport citizens are Fangtasia fans, I wonder. One sighting in the mall, or one photo taken of you in the parking lot in broad daylight, and our little secret makes international news." I held my hands up to block each word: "Local Vampire Sheriff Seen Shopping at Hot Topic at 11:30am. Miracle Or Fraud?" I lowered them. "Humans will think you faked being a vampire in the first place, and the Authority will shit grenades."

This irked him. "You cannot go out without me, lover. I can't risk it."

I waved him off. "Nothing will happen to me in the daytime, Eric. I'll go to the store, pick up something pretty, then come right back. If I get in trouble, come save me. But we can't risk letting you be seen. Agreed?"

His jaw ticked with irritation. He didn't like that I was leaving him. To be honest, I couldn't say I felt differently. His blood in my system must have heard us. It was starting to boil up, furious at the very _idea_ of being separated. My Light in his chest also tugged at me, letting me know that if I chose to leave this house, it was going to tear our hearts to pieces until I came back and slackened its grip. I squared my shoulders. I understood their anger, but this wasn't up for discussion. Eric's safety trumped their selfish demands.

"I'd rather call a professional and have them come here with something, then have it fitted to you."

"That's sweet, but I'm not letting anyone find out where you live. Not even some harmless old biddy seamstress."

He raked his hair in annoyance and stood up. "Fine. Go shopping. But stick to public areas and return home at once." He saw my arched brow and softened slightly. "_Please_."

"Manners look so hot on you."

He grunted. "If they get you to listen, I'll use them every day."

I bowed with exaggerated graciousness. "_Thank_ you," I returned ever-so-politely. "I'll be quicker than a hummingbird on speed. In the meantime, you can do me a favor and get some rest. You'll need your strength."

His eyes darted to his computer. My finger shot up. "No scheming! Not until I get home, anyway. Nap first. Underhanded sneakiness later. Deal?"

My vampire fox sighed in resignation, hating that he'd have to save his outfoxing for a few hours. He came around his desk, took my hands and kissed them. "Your Light is a slaver. She demands that I surrender myself to your wishes."

I smiled, opening my fingers and trapping his cheeks between them. "Your blood is a thief. I used to be strong and independent and stuff. Now look at me. Robbed."

He did. Slowly, he reached out and traced the thin bone of my outer eye socket. "Good," he said quietly. "It cannot just be me."

My smile turned embarrassed and I shooed his hands away. "All right, enough mushy stuff. I'm gonna go get ready." I thought a minute. "Can I borrow your car? Mine's still in Bon Temp."

"Which one?"

"Whichever one doesn't draw attention. Do you even own a Toyota?"

"I'd rather you took an amored tank."

"I'm not even going to ask if you have one. I don't want to know."

He zipped out of the room and zipped back so quickly that my robe fluttered in the breeze. A single key on a key chain dangled between his pinched fingers. "Take this one."

I took it from him. "Tell me it ain't a tank."

"It's a bimmer."

"What's that?"

"A car made by BMW."

I scrunched my nose. "You mean beemer."

He shook his head. "A common misconception. A beemer is a BMW _motorcycle_."

"Huh," I looked skeptical. I'd have to ask Jason about that. "So. You have a BMW. I guess that's about as modest as I can expect from you, isn't it?"

His ancient smiled tugged at the corners of his mouth. "I have a Bugatti, if you'd rather."

I waved him off again and headed for the stairs. I didn't know what a Bugatti was, exactly, but I was guessing that it was a million miles away from modest.

**E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S**

I was trying on a dress at a small boutique off of Canal Street when my phone beeped, letting know I had a message. I tugged out of the pink silk shift (totally not my look) and fished it out of my bag, clicking on the little envelope. My heart skipped a beat, thinking it was Eric. I'd seen him all of thirty minutes ago when he'd stood in his garage as I pulled away. If I hadn't know any better, I could have sworn my supermodel warrior of a boyfriend had been pouting at me. _Pouting_. Like a little girl. I'd waved teasingly and sped off down his driveway. We hadn't been together all that long, but in that time, we'd been separated all of three times. It was amazing we weren't sick of each other yet. I'd wondered briefly if our bonds were going to allow us any breathing space at all. Or would we need to be up each other's ass all the time, even when we were mad at each other, or even when one of us needed to work alone.

Did they have operations that surgically sewed two people together? They could separate conjoined twins, so how hard could it be to reverse the process?

I shook my head. Stupid bonds. I guess we were never going to be able to plan surprises for each other. If I wasn't close enough to him to hear the phone call to arrange it, I'd eat my hat.

I looked at the open message. It was from Alcide.

_Sook, meeting Hadley 4 lunch. She sounded nervous when she called. Everything OK?_

My ears perked up in interest. Hadley called Alcide? And asked him out to lunch? Huh. I thumbed back a quick answer.

_We're all good. No problems since we last talked. She must looooooove you. -S_

I smirked and tossed the phone back into my purse. That should get him good and riled up. He might not have liked the idea of Hadley belonging to Eric, but that hadn't stopped his thoughts from taking him in all kinds of romantic directions. I was hopeful. Both of them had made some unlucky choices and needed to heal. They couldn't have found a better person in each other to heal with, even if they had kinda tripped over each other. Hey, it was a way better How-I-Met-Your-Mother story than if they'd gotten their lattes mixed up at a Starbucks.

I turned in the small dressing room and gave a mournful stare at the pile of dresses I'd picked. All of them were nice, but none of them really suited me. Not that I thought Eric would object to any of them, in fact I was pretty sure he'd smile at anything I chose. Still. He wasn't exactly hard to please when it came to me. He thought my Walmart robe was hot shit. Sweet, silly man.

My eyes shifted and caught my reflection in the long mirror. Standing in nothing but my underwear (lavender this time), I watched my hands slither over my flat stomach. Breathing slowly, I pressed into my skin, probing for a Light that I'd tried to convince myself wasn't there. Nothing but warm flesh met my fingers.

I looked into my own eyes.

Was I really a mom?

My breath turned ragged as I thought of that word for the first time. I'd been thinking 'pregnant' since Claudine's visit. Not 'mom'. Or 'dad'. Or bouncing, giggling little baby. I'd been thinking of some weird creature with lasers for eyes and elephant feet, climbing his way up the Empire State Building and calling on the fairies of the world to unite. Smacking an airplane or two as they shot at him. _Pew! Pew!_

A baby.

My throat tightened and suddenly I really did want Eric to call me. The last thing I needed to do was freak out in a dress shop and make him come pick me up like some dithering waif with pregnant brain. At least he could try and talk me down. But I bit my lips and willed myself to stay calm. Nothing was certain yet. Claudine was a fairy, not an OBGYN. She might see something in me, but she said herself it was most likely impossible for me to have this scion thingy. We'd just have to wait and talk to a few more people about it. Starting with Mab. Maybe Dr. Ludwig. Actually, that was a good idea. I quickly texted Eric myself and asked him to make an appointment with her. I didn't mention the reason. He'd know, and I was now paranoid about who might be spying on us.

He texted back quickly. _Done. -E_

I was about to attack the pile of dresses again, hoping maybe I'd missed the perfect one somewhere in the bottom, when a knock on the door startled me.

"Miss? Everything okay?"

"Sure!" I called out automatically to the sales lady, then immediately reconsidered. I unlocked the door and stood there in my underthings while gazing at her sadly. "Actually, no. There's this big party tonight and I need a dress that'll make my boyfriend feel..." I looked for the right word.

The fortysomething woman smiled knowingly at me. "Breathless?"

The word startled a laugh from me. "Exactly. Breathless." Be still his unbeating heart. Spike his nonexistent blood pressure.

She nodded and held up her finger. "I think I have just the thing in the back. Size six, right?"

I nodded back and she closed the door between us and disappeared. I stood there for a second or two, until I heard her pad back to the door and open it. She held a dress up by a hanger in one hand, cradling the body, showing it off.

"What do you think of this one?"

I didn't think.

I didn't breathe.

I didn't sputter one single word as I stared at the dress I knew I'd be buying. I didn't care if it cost ten thousand dollars. As I slowly reached out and fingered the cherry red material, I could swear to God that the dress was calling to me telepathically.

And it had a dirty mind.

This. _This_ was the red dress I'd imagined buying to surprise Eric with. It was silky with a slight sheen. Its deep, plunging neckline would show off my cleavage to perfection. It was floor length, but had a slit straight up to the hip. There was no flare in it, it hugged everything God gave me, and them some. It was naughtier than if I went to the party naked, and yet didn't advertize anything overt. It let your imagination do that.

The woman was thinking at me. _Is she all right? I thought she'd like it maybe it's the wrong color maybe it ain't that kind of party Why is she so quiet? I can find something else if this isn't what she-_

"No!" I nearly shouted, then put my hand to my mouth. She couldn't take it away! It was perfect. It was my Chase-Me-Catch-Me-Fuck-Me dress and it wasn't going anywhere except home with me, like the saucy minx that it was. "I...um. Sorry, ma'am. It's just so pretty. I'd love - _love_ - to try it on. May I?"

Her smile grew wider and she handed me the hanger. "Be sure to step out here and let me see. We just got it in today!"

I agreed enthusiastically and nearly ripped the thing off the wire, slipping my legs through and pulling it up to my shoulders. I zipped it up at the side, smoothed it down, and turned back to the mirror.

My breath hitched. My eyes grew wide. Even without makeup, even without heels and jewelry, even with just plain old me inside this dress, I could have caused a ten-car pileup. I looked sexy. I looked classy. I looked untouchable, unattainable to all with the exception of a supermodel warrior. I looked like I belonged to Eric Northman, and _nobody_ could mistake me for belonging to anyone less.

At the risk of being vain and crass, I was one high end piece of ass.

I turned to the side just to make sure. The side slit flashed my tan legs at me and my butt looked like a crimson work of art. High. End. Ass.

I grinned and blushed with pride. There were some days when I felt that I wasn't half bad to look at.

I opened the door and stepped out to my waiting audience. Suddenly I was nervous again. Hopefully she saw what I saw. Looking at the floor, I asked subconsciously. "So? How do I look? Pretty?"

She didn't answer right away. I looked up, hoping to get words so I didn't have to dip into her head. She was pressing her hand to her throat, then to her lips. "Oh, honey," she breathed. "Your man's gonna fall to his knees."

I bit into my lower lip. "Think so?"

"If I owned this store, I'd _give_ the dress to you, free of charge. It'd be a sin on anyone else."

I agreed. My credit card was practically leaping out of my wallet. I wasn't going to disappoint it. "Do you have any shoes? And a necklace or something? I'd like to go the whole nine yards."

She was already herding me back into the dressing room, wanting me to take it off so I didn't wrinkle it. "Honey, you picked the right store."

And sure enough. She found some red slingback heels, complete with a modest platform so that I didn't kill myself hobbling around like a giraffe on her tiptoes. She showed me several necklaces, all of which were sterling silver. I shook my head, smiling softly, and started to ask if she had beads or a fabric choker or something, but then I stopped. One of the silver necklaces was a solid piece of curved metal with a bright red stone inlaid at the throat. Out of curiosity, I held up my ring to compare the stones.

Their color matched perfectly.

_But silver._

Eric wouldn't be able to touch it.

No big deal, I supposed. I wasn't like we'd be necking at a formal shindig. And it was awfully pretty.

But something else ocurred to me. Something that had me lifting the necklace from its black velvet display and putting it on the counter next to my dress and shoes. "That one."

"A lovely choice. Would you like to see the matching bracelet and earrings?"

"That's really kind of you, but I don't need to see them. Just add them to the pile."

She reached into the glass case and took out each. I really did like them. The earrings dangled and the bracelet was actually a pair of thick cuffs. I swiped my Visa (I still didn't check the prices and nor did I plan to) as she carefully zipped the dress in a black protective sleeve and the rest in a large paper bag.

"Is there a pharmacy around here?" I asked casually.

She nodded, handing back my card. "Sure is. Just across the street and four stores down, next to The Body Shop."

I smiled, thanked her effusively for my things, and walked out. I crossed the street, hopping into The Body shop to pick up some makeup, then into the pharmacy.

They had both of the things I was looking for.


	33. Chapter 33

**A/N**: Not a long one, but I wanted to write the party from Sookie's POV, so here's Eric's first. The dress.

After her text asking for an appointment with the good doctor, I wrote an email to the woman asking if she'd kindly pencil us in at her earliest convenience. I then ordered three hundred African daisies from a nearby florist, and instructed that fifty of them be delivered every hour for six hours the next day. Sookie may have restricted me to a peasant's flower, but she'd neglected to specify what kind. Or how many. Or how often. I time-delayed both messages. They wouldn't be sent until dark. Sookie was right. I needed to keep my day walking a tightly-guarded secret. One small slip, something as innocent as sending an email at noon, and people would start asking questions. Of course, vampires were capable of staying awake during the day and taking care of business via the internet was a common use of that time, but it was one tiny clue amongst hundreds that would stack up if I wasn't careful.

After shutting the machine down, I decided to take my lover's advice and sleep. I needed it. And as agitated as I felt by her absence, her presence was even more distracting. I might as well spend the time without her in the ether. If she met danger, I would feel her fear and awaken. Even something as minor as a squirrel darting in front of the car, I would know it. Then, I would simply need to stop myself from darting to her side and beheading that squirrel for startling her. Sookie would kill me if I did.

As I began walking up the stairs, she sent another text.

_Decided to swing by Bon Temps. Need 2 talk 2 Sam, Lafayette & Jason. Love you. -S_

I smiled at the last words, then wrote back. _Don't text me. Call me. I want your voice. Why Sam? Yours. -E_

I removed my clothes and settled into my bed, growing more annoyed at the fact that she wasn't with me. Another ping. Another message.

_Is your throat broken? YOU can call ME. Need 2 talk about future at Merlotte's. Damn right you're mine. -S_

I chaffed at her bold certainty, but she wasn't wrong. Even now, my blood sought me from her position miles away. And her Light? I arched my back, looking to relieve the pressure in my chest as the little orb steadily increased her choke on me. Where did it sit in my chest, exactly? Just next to my heart? Completely inside of it? Or did it encase the organ, holding it hostage in its sunny grip? I could only imagine what an x-ray would show. I arched again and gasped softly. She'd only been gone for ninety minutes. How suffocating would it become if she left my side for an entire day? A week? A month?

Claudine's face simmered in my mind and I growled at it. Sookie had been taken to the Fae world for a very short period of time, she'd told me. No more than twenty minutes. Yet here in this world, she'd been gone for months. If Claudine reported Sookie's condition back to the Mab queen and they attempted to take her again, I couldn't be held accountable for my actions. I would not survive for months without her, and that was here in _this_ realm. If she disappeared into another world without me, I would have to torture and burn and shred everything that obstructed me from her. People or gods or interdimensional doors. It wouldn't matter. The distance between us had to be removed or it would kill us both.

Looking at my phone, I ignored her comment about the shifter's bar. I would interrogate her on that when she returned. For now, I simply wanted her. She wouldn't hustle if I became indignant over her visiting friends. Instead, I chose a more direct method.

Without a thought towards modesty, I used my phone to photograph my naked, pounding erection and sent it to her. _This is yours as well. You're neglecting it. _

Four seconds. Then a spike of surprise rippled from her. I could almost feel her blush, even in the cool dark of my room. Thirty-seven more seconds. Another ping.

_Damn you. I want 2 yell at you, but I can't. All I can think about is every place I want it._

Another ping followed as I finished. I opened it.

_I can think of at least 3. _

My fangs clicked.

_Don't tease or I'll rip through the car roof and fuck you through to the asphalt. _

Her excitement increased. Another ping. This was was slightly different. It meant a file was attached. I opened it.

_Rip out the steering column, and you just might be able to. _ The photo she'd sent was of her lap. Her toned, tanned, bare lap. Her loose skirt had been pulled up to her inner thighs. She'd spread them slightly, giving me a hint of what lay two inches further. The steering wheel was protruding at the top, blocking her knees from view.

A final ping. _Shouldn't you be resting?_

I roared in frustration and threw my phone across the room. It exploded through the drywall. Like I gave a fuck. I wanted to fly to her and make her answer for her taunts. I wanted to jerk off and relieve some of the mindless ache she so effortlessly inflicted upon me. Instead, I threw myself face down and forced my brain into sleep mode.

I was a careful being, never one to fly off the handle and advertize my vulnerabilities. I would not be goaded into doing something stupid.

**E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S**

When I awoke again, it was closer to five o'clock. I'd succeeded in garnering a few hours of rest. Sookie had been right. I'd needed them. Especially if I was going to have to simper to a bunch of AVL blowhards tonight. It took Herculean effort and always left me drained afterwards. I blinked in the darkness. I scented the air.

I was alone, but Sookie's fragrance was with me. She'd been in my bed. Recently. Within the last hour. I inhaled again. She'd hugged Sam. He reeked of standard shifter and substandard alcohol. He must have been working the bar. She'd also hugged Lafayette and her brother. Both reeked of sweat and dried clay. They had been working in the highway crew.

I snorted, clearing my sinuses, and inhaled again. She'd snuggled with me awhile, then wandered away. Not far.

I rose and followed my nose.

The door to the bathroom was ajar. There was a minute amount of steam in the air. She had bathed, but not in the last hour. I reached out and pushed the door open.

"Sookie?"

She turned away from the mirror, lipstick in hand, and looked at me.

My fangs clicked instantly and my thigh muscles went rigid, preparing to zip across the room and tear the vision before me into screaming little pieces.

My beautiful little mate. She'd spent all day finding just the right dress to accompany me this evening. It was a terrible, terrible shame that neither she, I or the dress would survive the next ten seconds. She was, for lack of a better word, _spectacular_.

Her gown was nothing more than red paint. It covered all, yet hid nothing. Her neckline plunged into my private territory and gave everyone an eyeful of her delicious cleavage. Not that anyone would be seeing her, since she wasn't leaving this house, or my bed, ever again. Her high heels put her at a very convenient fucking height, and I considered that I might spare that part of her ensemble, purely out of utility. Her hair was up in a very proper little twist, leaving her throat bare. I would bite her a dozen times before I tore that prim little hairstyle apart, one bobby pin at a time.

Her makeup was flawless. Her mascara made her doe eyes pop. She'd only have to blink and every vampire in the room would make a damn fool of himself in hopes that she'd simply look their way. She wore no blush. She didn't need it. But her lips. I inhaled sharply, making her jump at the sudden noise. It was the same lipstick that she'd marked me with on our first night. The same paint she'd used to kiss me 137 times and fellate my cock into a crimson work of art. It remembered perfectly. I'd been hard the moment I woke up and scented her. Now, I was bigger than ever, my dick straining like a chained dog, wildly fighting to get to a bloody steak.

I took one step. That lipstick would paint me once again. That unblemished throat would be riddled with puncture marks. That dress would hang in rags on her luscious body. And those heels would leave stabbing scratches on my ass.

She must have seen every thought in my head flash in my eyes. Her hands shot up.

"No!"

_I'm sorry_, I projected. _We're staying home. Fuck the new Magister. I'm riding you until you fall unconscious and I may not stop even then. _

Her eyes nearly bugged out in fear. She had no time to shoot me, or Still me. I'd warned her, she'd never stop a vampire if she hesitated.

I was across the room in a flash.

"Eric!"

I grabbed her by the hips.

Searing pain erupted in my hands and I roared, jerking them away.

"Shit!" she cried, throwing herself backwards, stumbling on her heels until she hit the far wall. She put her hands up again in a shielding gesture. "Baby, stay back."

My hands were melted, angry boils flared up across their spans, then calmed and returned to normal. The unmistakable burn of silver echoed in my skin and would continue to do so for the next hour or so. I hissed at my lover, furious and horny and fucking confused.

"Sssssilver," I growled accusingly at her.

Trembling, she nodded. "Are you okay?"

"You fucking silvered me. Am I supposed to be okay?"

She huffed, standing a bit straighter, checking her gown for charred handprints. "I didn't mean to, Mr. Pissy. You weren't supposed to attack me like that. You could have ruined my dress! I'm not like Pam, you know! I don't have three hundred others on standby."

Slowly, I rose from my hunch over my hands and began to stalk towards her again, albeit much, much slower.

"You dress like this and expect me to control myself?"

She gave me an exasperated look. "Hell yes, I do! You're the one who said I needed this thing!" She gestured downwards at her clothes.

I glanced at the counter. A small pharmacy bag sat crumpled, next to some sort of small rectangular box ... and an atomizer bottle. I hissed again.

She nodded again as I came to a stop in front of her. I extended a single finger, hovering just over her forehead. "Everywhere?" Meaning the silver.

She bit her lips. Damn my little angel, she was actually trying not to smile. "Not everywhere," she giggled, and leaned in to kiss me chastely. She held her arms back, her hands gripping the towel rack, keeping her body well away from my nudity. Her lips tasted cheap and sweet. No burn met my kiss as I returned it, albeit begrudgingly.

"You think you know me so well," I snitted with bad grace against her soft mouth. "This was unnecessary."

She smiled and continued to press that single inch of safe flesh into me. "Clearly it was, but I gotta confess, the silver isn't for you."

"Explain." Fuck, her mouth tasted so good.

"I figured that since I can't Smite or Still anybody in a room full of witnesses, this was the only way to make sure no one can grab me again."

I hated that I admired her idea. "How am I to touch you? Protect you?"

She reeled back a few inches. She looked so fucking pretty that my body was already forgetting the heat of silver on my hands while my mind began working out a way to get at her without pain. She grinned. "I'll keep my hand in the crook of your arm all night. No one will know about the silver, unless they do something inappropriate."

She reached out and collected some jewelry from the counter. Slowly, without looking away, she began to put on her earrings, her cuffs, her thick necklace. I smelled their silver composition and snarled softly.

"More? Other vampires will detect it. What am I supposed to say about my bonded wearing our Cryptonite?"

She raised her brows and worried her lip hopefully. "That we're into kink?"

I barked a laugh and backed off, giving her space to move away from me without risking contact. She smiled apologetically as she moved back to the mirror, preening to one side and the other. Her perfectly high-set ass faced me. The dress did nothing to hide the sexy separation of her cheeks. I detected no panty line. _None._ Cautiously, I moved toward her again.

"Only your lips?" I asked. I wanted that ass in my hands. Fused against my hips. Slapping against my balls.

She watched me through the mirror, carefully reapplying her lipstick. "Do you mean, did I shower, spray my naked body, then put the dress on and spray every inch of it?"

Growling, I nodded.

She pressed her lips together. A pathetic ruse at evening out the red. She puckered them and sent me a wet smack. "'Fraid so."

"You enchanting bitch."

She set her teeth together and flashed them dramatically at me. "Why, thank you."

"And your panties?" I stood directly behind her, my head and shoulders clearly visible over her in our reflection.

She shrugged, being careful not to lean backwards. "Eh."

"Cruel,_ angelic_ little bitch."

"You know, you _could look_ at it as kink. It's not like I could ever realistically tie you up." She turned and stared up at me provocatively. "This is kinda the same. No touchy."

"_Not_ the same. You can't touch me either." She was right. I did sound pissy. And while the memory of being restrained in the meadow made me ache painfully with lust, I had to concede this was a million times worse. She looked fuckably, edibly beautiful. She would be on my arm all night in front of hundreds of powerful dignitaries. They would take one look at her and pray for my murder, simply to relieve her of her attachment. She was everything I wanted. She was everything_ they_ wanted.

But she was poison. To all of us.

"I hate your cleverness," I gruffed, reaching for a towel. Carefully, I draped it over her shoulders and settled my hands over it, kneading her delicate shoulder blades. The material irriated me. I was naked, she was seductively clothed. We should be starting at each other in the mirror as I plowed her from behind. She should be gripping the counter and sobbing. I should be tearing at seams and molding her bare breasts, using them as leverage to pull her back into me again and again. Instead, I was cursed to pet her innocently through a towel.

Her head smelled heavenly. "Your hair as well?" I asked mournfully. I couldn't even kiss her crown.

For the first time, she looked regretful. "Yeah. Everything but my lips." A deep apology rippled into me. "I couldn't stand not kissing you, even for just one evening."

I leaned down and placed a kiss on the towel. "You are very wise," I praised her, placing another kiss closer to her neck. "There will be vampires in attendance who are older than me. Stronger. You have thought of a defense that they cannot breach."

She smiled faintly. "Unless they bring towels."

"They must touch you to know they need towels. By then, I will have killed them." As was my right. Grabbing a bonded companion of another was just as grievously inappropriate as grabbing their crotch. It simply wasn't done. Not at a white tie affair.

I cast a glance down at the counter again. I had been so shocked by the atomized silver that I hadn't taken much notice of the opened box next to it. My eyes lifted in surprise at her reflection. "And?"

She followed my gaze and shrugged slightly under my hands. She picked up a small plastic wand next to the sink and held it over her shoulder for me. "See for yourself."

I looked at the small indicator window on the pregnancy stick. My brow furrowed. I smelled the faint, clean scent of Sookie's urine. Truly, she was so unlike any other human alive. Ever her passings were near odorless. I looked back up at her. "What does white mean?"

She took it from me and flicked it into the sink in frustration. "I don't know! I thought this would be the perfect way to settle Claudine's claim, but when I peed on the stick and waited, nothing happened! There's supposed to be two lines if I'm pregnant and one line if I'm not." She made dismissive gesture at the sink. "But nothing! Not even the line to prove I peed on it!"

I massaged her consolingly. "Perhaps your body chemistry doesn't register on human tests."

"That's what I figured, but it still doesn't stop me from being pissed off." She looked at me plaintively. "Why can't I get a straight answer about this? Even the people at Clearblue are jerking me around."

I gazed at her tight, sleek little waist and growled softly. "We will know soon enough, lover." If she carried my child, or only my blood, I was hungry to reestablish my claim to her. I hadn't allowed myself to think too much on the idea, but I had to admit, the image of her, swollen and lush with the evidence of our mating, made me consider torturing my body with silver while my cock found paradise in her scorching wet pussy.

But no. I mustn't.

I lifted the towel and tossed it aside. As I turned towards the door, I added, "You are also healthy for me. Were it not for that silver, we would never have made it out of this house. I would have ignored a summons and incurred the wrath of my superiors. Thank you."

She made a wistful noise as she followed me. "Sure. Make me watch that perfect ass walk away and tell me how wonderful I am that I cockblocked us."

I laughed at her pout, pleased that she regretted her own ingenuity. I strode into my closet and chose my black suit. White shirt. Long, white satin tie. Many vampires wore bowties to these gatherings, but I've never liked them. Too stiff and studied. I dressed in five seconds.

I stood before my love for her appraisal, hooking my cufflinks into place. "You like?"

She stood silently, gripping her small red clutch. Lust echoed loudly through the bond. My head lowered towards my wrist, I looked up slowly at her, knowing how wolflike I appeared as I stared her down. "Well?"

"If I shower really fast, we could be having sex in ten minutes."

I tsked her, shaking my head in admonishment (and no small amount of goading). "But angel, we'd be late. You don't want me to get in trouble, do you?" My voice dripped with faint surprise at her lack of priority.

She huffed and stomped her pretty red heel. "But you're hot," she whined prettily.

I scoffed and straighted my arms, my jacket resettling over my sleeves. I bent an elbow to her. "I'm also punctual."

Muttering a string of very unladylike curses, she took my arm. Time to escort my silver angel to the prom.


	34. Chapter 34

**A/N**: You're not going to believe this. I'm pregnant AGAIN. Okay, so yeah, we were trying, but it happened in like, three seconds and now I'm going through morning sickness all over again! Dammitalltohell! So naturally, sitting in front of a computer is like going five rounds with De La Hoya. Forgive me for whining, it's all I ever do in the ANs. Better call me a whaaaaaaambulance. Sookie's POV.

It was still early, so Eric drove to Fangtasia first (in the "Bugatti", which I figured must be Italian for "suped-up, high-priced whore of the automotive world"). New Orleans was a few hours away, but the gathering didn't start until ten and we had plenty of time. Eric wanted Pam in the loop. I figured he'd disobeyed me and schemed while I'd shopped. Naughty boy. On the steering wheel, his black driving gloves squeaked as he made a turn. He hadn't said anything, but he'd pointedly _stared_ at me when he'd reached over my lap and opened the glove compartment to retrieve them. He made quite a slow show of putting them on, making it damn clear that the gloves were for handling me and not the car. Later. I watched the perforated leather stretch as he gripped the wheel tighter. Once he parked in the employees' lot in the back, my door made a futuristic _beeeeewr_ noise and it lifted up and away, like a bird's wing. He was standing at my side, offering his gloved hand, before it completed.

I sat in the seat with my brows in my hairline. "Seriously?" The door opened like a wing?

He cocked his head. "Isn't it polite to help a lady from her car?"

"Sure it's polite. I'm talking about this," I waved my hand at the dashboard. "This car is beyond ridiculous. Admit it, you're trying to shock me."

Smirking, he reached in and scooped me out by the shoulders and thighs. I tensed, jerking my hands away from him, mindful to not touch his neck or face as I always did when he held me. He set me down gracefully and clicked the toggle that made the doors close and the locks flip. _Beeeeewr. Click_.

He offered his arm and I took it. "Not at all," he said breezily, lying through his damn teeth. "A certain amount of spectacle is required for this type of event. Vampires of means must show off."

I flicked my wrist dismissively. "Surely you of all people don't need to. Even if you were five nights old and dirt poor, you're still the prettiest vampire in the world. You could show up in a Gremlin and still turn every head."

I didn't give a thought to my comment. It was true. Even if I'd found him clawing through the dirt on his very first night as a vampire, naked and hungry and disoriented, I'd still love him every bit as much as the wealthy ancient he was now.

But I guess it was a bigger sentiment that I realized.

He stopped walking and grabbed my shoulders, turning me into him, glaring at me accusingly. "Why do you torture me? Why do you cherish me and spurn my wealth and cover yourself in _fucking_ silver? How am I supposed to respond when I can't even touch you?" He squeezed his fingers together, making the leather squeak again, emphasizing his point.

I sighed. "I don't spurn your wealth. I just don't care about it. And...well, you _can_ _kiss_ me," I offered pitifully, knowing full well it wasn't enough.

"I want to tear this dress off with my teeth and lick you clean."

I whimpered at the image. "W-well. You can return the compliment, at the very least. You never told me that I looked nice tonight."

His eyes clouded and he pulled me closer. When he whispered, not even the vampires inside could have heard him. "Nice, Sookie? You want to hear you look _nice_?" The word dripped with disdain. "You look like rough sex, lover. You smell like me, and yet the set of your shoulders and your sparkling eyes are those of an eager virgin. Your politeness makes me hard. Your shoes make me want bend you over this ridiculous car. Everything about you makes me want to fuck your mouth with my tongue, your pussy with my cock, and your ass with my fingers, so that there's not a single point of entry in you that isn't filled with _me_."

I gasped and looked at the ground. Splinters of broken glass glinted in the dim street light. A black finger appeared at my chin and lifted my gaze back up. A beautiful man stared at me. "And yet you look like you've never been touched. I feel as though I've never had you. It physically _hurts_ to look at you. That's how..._nice_ you look tonight."

I swallowed. Fucking silver. I hated myself. Why was I so shortsighted about this? Didn't I realize that Eric would blow my brains out with filthy compliments until the stupid dress was ruined with girl come anyway and I jumped him right here on top of his car? That maybe smelling like fresh Eric sex was just as preventative as an ounce of colliodal _silver_? Who would touch me if I were dripping with his semen? Who would dare?

I could feel my eyes tighten, telling me that if he kept talking, I'd end up crying. "I love you. I'll buy another gown for you to rip. I'll dress up just as pretty. I'll give you all the rough sex you want." I looked sideways. "On any car you want."

I heard him chuckled softly through his nose. I dared another glance upwards. He was smiling. "Sookie, I..." he paused, "...I know it sounds contradictory, but I _love_ that I can't touch you. So little is ever denied me. You are my brilliant little fairy. Mine, yet untouchable." He lowered and kissed me. The one thing he was allowed. "Wonderful, infuriating Sookie."

I bit my lip. "I still want you."

"When we get home, I'll throw you in the pool."

"You have a pool?" I really needed to take a proper tour of his house.

He led me inside. Pam was already setting up. She was alone. I guess Ginger was late again. She turned at the feel of her master's presence, but her fang drop was all for me, baby. "Ssssookie," she drizzled at me, her eyes sliding all over my dress and leaving an oily residue behind.

Eric's fangs dropped as well. It was infinitely hotter. "Pam, I want to be good to you. Why are you bad?"

I snorted. Hadn't I heard that on some Lifetime movie from some abusive husband? Women getting knocked around because they "asked" for it? I shrugged mentally.

Pam's lips pulled into a piss-poor imitation of a smile and her fangs obediently went back up. "You both look...lovely." It clearly took her a minute to find a word that wasn't "fuck-hot", "tasty", or "biteable". Poor Pam.

I smiled and thanked her. Eric snapped his fingers impatiently. "Get in my office. We need to talk."

He waited until we were all inside before locking the door. Pam leaned in to sniff discreetly as I walked by her to get to the couch. "Silver," she noted of my jewelry. "Kinky."

I winked at Eric. "Told ya."

"It's more than just her jewelry, Pam. She's coated herself in colloidal silver. There isn't an inch that's not protected."

This had her attention. She gave him her classic bitch-you-crazy brow arch and cocked her chin. "Protected? Why in the fuck does she need protection?"

She turned to me. "He_ is_ letting you sleep, right? This isn't some anti-sex device to make sure he doesn't fuck you while you're trying to recuperate?"

"Bingo. You should read palms when you're not working the door."

"Sookie," Eric gently admonished my sarcasm. "Pam, I've been summoned to the formal announcement of the new Magister this evening. Sookie is my companion, but since we don't want a repeat of the Sophie Anne fuck-up, she has taken a brilliant precaution."

Pam frowned. "But no vampire may touch her. She's yours."

"True. And now no vampire _can_ touch her. They'll singe their dainty fingers if they try, and then their fingers will be the least of their worries." _Squeeaak_. Eric's gloves agreed as he laced his hands together in front of his lips.

I crossed my legs. The slit in my dress fell open, revealing my entire thigh as I settled one knee over the other. _Squeeaak._ I didn't look up as I brushed nonexistent fluff off my clutch. I knew Eric's hands were liking the show.

Instead, I focused on Pam. "Any luck finding guards for Hunter?"

Her eyes flicked away from my thigh (dirty vampires) and up to my face. "I've sent out feelers. We should have several candidates soon." She slid her gaze back to Eric. "What shall I do about Miss Happy tonight?"

"Hadley," he automatically corrected her. "When she isn't with Jason in his home, I want Herveaux to watch her."

"Oh, comm'on, baby. You can't expect Alcide to be at her side 24/7. He has his own life." Plus I didn't want the beginnings of their possible romance to get messed up with a business transaction. They should be able to come together on their own.

Eric didn't agree. "Pay him," he instructed Pam. "Whatever he deems fair."

"No!" I said, crossing my arms. "I don't like this."

"Name your alternate," Eric replied, his steely eyes boring into mine. "Name someone you trust implicitly. Someone who understands the danger your cousin is in. Who can protect her, or at least knows how to avoid a stronger enemy. Name him, and I shall procure him."

God damn him. I bit my cheek. No one. I trusted a very few. Even fewer understood Hadley's clusterfuck. And the list of who could save her from it whittled down to one. I huffed. "I don't know as many people as you," I retorted petulantly. God, that sounded stupid.

But he smiled indulgently. "Lover, you wouldn't trust a guard for Hadley if you didn't know him. May I use the wolf?"

I huffed again. I guess those two would just have to fall in love while Hadley tried on jeans at the mall while he watched. That's what guards did, right? Watched girls in their custody try on clothes? That might be another Lifetime myth. I wasn't sure.

"Fine."

He nodded to Pam. It was settled.

"What shall I do in your absence?" she bowed her head, acknowledging his unspoken command to call Alcide.

Eric stood up slowly, smoothing out his sleeves as he spoke. "Until I return, Area Five is yours. The other sheriffs will be in attendance tonight as well. If there's inter-area trouble, call their seconds. Anything vampire-related I expect you to handle yourself. If, for any reason, you detect fairies..." he stilled and shot a chilly glance at me. Our bond churned possessively. I felt a momentary stab of his fear. Fear that I would be taken from him. I shook my head softly. Never fucking ever.

He came back to himself and stepped around his desk. "Summon me," he finished. "Immediately."

Pam nodded again.

Eric offered me his hand and I took it hesitantly. Leather aside, I still worried about touching him. I stood and he guided me towards the door. As we passed Pam again, she said, "You're the only temptation in the world that would make a vampire knowingly endure silver, Sookie."

I paused midstep and smiled, raising my bare arm to her. "You're awful sweet, Pam. Care to try?"

It was only a joke, but Pam's pupils dilated and Eric jerked me back into his arms before I could chuckle. "Never offer yourself to another," he hissed in my ear. "Even in jest."

I looked up into his rock-hard expression and swallowed. Dammit. I'd done it again. I'd offered something to Pam that belonged to Eric. Why did I keep doing that? "I'm sorry," I said humbly. "You know I never would, really."

The chill melted and he smiled faintly. "I know this."

He held me tightly as he led me to the car.

I stood next to my door waiting for him to click his _beeeeewr_ button, but instead he took my hands in his. His lips were near my ear again. "Lean forward."

I turned my head to look at him. "What?"

"Lean forward. Now."

My stomach clenched instinctively. I knew that tone of voice. My mind reeled. The small, soft words told me I was about to receive another disciplinary fuck. I shook my head. The reality of the silver all over me made that impossible. My confusion must have showed.

He took my hands and guided me until I was leaning over onto the squat car window, almost ninety degrees.

_Squeeeeak._

"W-what are you doing?" I squeaked right back.

I felt the silky whisper of my dress slowly being pulled to one side. The slit on my hip made it easy. He simply pulled from the other side until all of my legs were bare, then slowly peeled it upwards until it was hanging over my hips, the majority of the material gripped tightly in his gloved hand.

"Beautiful."

I inhaled softly. The cool night air played over my naked ass. I was bent over that stupid car half naked before I even realized what he was up to. I felt his eyes glaring at me from behind, cutting into the chill.

"Eric?"

"The only temptation in the world," he repeated Pam's words softly. Suddenly his body filled the space behind mine. I gasped as he cupped my ass fully in both hands. On pure instinct, I arched. His hands always felt good, but the leather gloves were a different experience. I felt a stab of excitement at their impersonal feel.

"We're going to be late," I whispered, hoping like hell we would be.

"Why?" he whispered back grumpily. "I can't fuck you. I can't touch you. I can't do anything I want...except this."

I gasped again as he delivered a light, stinging slap to my right cheek. "Uhh!" Fuck! I moaned softly, arching even further back into him. He'd spanked me! Like a little kid! And it felt fucking unbelievable! It echoed loudly between my thighs. My clit was vibrating. Suddenly the air felt even colder as wetness peeked out from my folds.

"Oh, my God," I groaned. "What was that for?" And thank you, sir. May I have another?

He was already rubbing the spot soothingly, clucking his tongue in mock sympathy. "For the silver," he replied lightly.

Another light slap hit my left cheek. "Uhh!" I was louder. I broadened my stance, opening to him.

"For the dress," he explained.

Another slap on the right side. I pushed on my hands, unconsciously waiting for his hips to lock onto mine and begin slamming me against the door. My arms prepared for the strain. My mind wailed in impatience for it. "Eric," I whimpered his name pleadingly. But there was nothing he could do. I'd made sure of that. Stupid, stupid Sookie.

"For offering your gifts to Pam. Again."

I nodded wildly, bent over and splayed wide, hoping for a more serious punishment.

When it came, I cried out in delighted surprise.

Two of his fingers rimmed me before sliding snuggly inside. "For me," he rasped, his cool, disinterested tone replaced by a clenched hunger.

"_Yes_," I agreed desperately, pumping backwards, fucking his gloved hand. "For you. Always you."

Another slap to my left cheek as he worked me. "Mine!"

"Yes!"

"_My_ angel. _My_ Sookie. _My_ virgin, no matter how many ways I fuck her, or how many children she gives me. _Mine_!"

"_Yes_!"

"The second you're clean," he growled in my ear, "I'm going to bite this perfect ass of yours while you fuck my face."

A hard slap to my right and suddenly my vision failed me and I screamed, coming hard around his fingers, my walls collapsing and dragging him in, almost breaking them off at the knuckle.

Eric roared in victory, continuing to pump them, his other hand gripping my hip as he bucked his erection against me, his hips curved around mine.

I sobbed and trembled, nearly falling face first into the car. He anticipated this. One his feet went between mine and suddenly the wall of his body crowded mine. I was sandwiched over the top of the car, hugging it as I tried to catch my breath. My bare legs and butt were pressed warmly against him, while the coolness of the car seeped into my front. I shivered at the contrast. There was no noise except my hitching breath and the grit scraping under our shoes as we adjusted our stance.

"I'm so in love with you," I told the man behind me, my face pressed against the roof.

My dress was released and smoothed back into place over my legs. An enormous cock was jabbing me in the back, but I received nothing more than a single finger tipping my chin up and sideways, where I got a very soft kiss over my shoulder.

I smiled with post-coital laziness. "Can we go home yet?"

He smiled back. "Once I've shown you off. Once I've rendered onto Caesar. And once you've told me about your day. Then yes. We'll go home."

I made a noise of annoyance, but pushed up from the car and shooed him backwards. "What happened to no touchy?" I asked playfully as I rearranged my gown and took a tissue from my clutch to discreetly wipe between my thighs.

He hit the button and the doors opened. He helped me in before getting in himself. He didn't respond. Instead, he brought his index finger to his mouth and slowly licked from base to tip. My mouth dropped open a little as I watched him tongue my flavor off his glove.

He keyed the ignition. We took off.

E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S

The drive took about two and a half hours.

I told him about my detour to Bon Temps that day. I'd been gone for so many days now, I figured everyone I knew was entitled to an explanation... or a lie that mollified their worries, at any rate. My first stop had been Sam. After a mighty bear hug and a kiss on the cheek, he proceeded to brow beat me for being AWOL for three whole shifts that week. I apologized profusely. I was a brat, I knew. I told him what I could, not that he already couldn't tell. Just like Alcide, he'd taken one whiff, then snorted in disgust.

"You reek of the sheriff."

"Be nice," I chided, my hands automatically going to my hips. "Long story. Basically I'm his and he's mine. I'm going through some serious shit right now, and even if I wasn't crazy about him, I'd still need him. So back off."

He frowned. "What kind of serious shit are we talkin', here?"

I couldn't tell him about the fairies. I trusted him completely, but I couldn't risk explaining it to anyone. Not when they were susceptible to glamouring vampires and mind-reading fairies. Any enemies who came asking questions would find the truth 'fore they could spit. Ignorance was best. So I shrugged. "It's bad enough. But with Eric, I'm pretty sure I'll work it out."

I quickly changed the subject and asked (very sheepishly) if he'd take me off the work roster for the foreseeable future. I couldn't risk disappointing him, not when I couldn't account for my whereabouts from one hour to the next. It wasn't fair on the other girls. He grabbed his clipboard and began to erase my name from the next two months. He brow quirked in annoyance.

"Is this on account of the shit?"

"For now. Yeah. I just don't wanna keep letting you down, Sam."

He brushed away some eraser rinds. "Not that it's my business, but what the hell are you gonna do for money?"

I bit my lip and didn't answer. Eric and I hadn't discussed it, but now that our bonds had virtually melted us together, I was certain that, should any financial troubles come my way, that he would suggest/demand that he take care of them. I wasn't at all happy at the prospect of being a kept woman and nor did I plan to stay one, but for now, slinging beers in a remote bar was an unnecessary risk. Between getting kidnapped or possibly killed or even tortured by our bonds because of the distance, I really didn't have much room to argue about minimum wage. Not when my boyfriend drove a million dollar "whore of the automotive world". We could revisit my earning my keep once these multiple problems got ironed out.

The eraser did its job. My name was gone from the little shift squares. For some reason, I felt equal parts of relieved and sad. I guess I felt bad about leaving a big piece of my old life behind. At the same time, if anyone _did_ come looking for me, that clipboard was one less place they'd find any clues. I was a ghost.

I chatted a little while longer. In the end, I hugged him again and begged off to go find my brother. Sam got to preen a little that I'd seen him before family, and I had my excuse not to dawdle.

Jason and Lafayette were working the crew, as I'd expected. Jason had been an inarticulate machine gun of questions, while Lafayette simply hugged me hello and shook his head when I asked if he'd heard from Tara. They were both pouring with sweat. Our hugs and conversations were brief. I told Jason that I was fine and that I'd be staying with a friend until I got a few things sorted out. I hated being so vague, but I felt exposed on the road. Nor did I want to explain to my brother about fairies and Authorities and bonds, not when his surprise contributed directly to the volume of his questions. There were just too many guys within earshot. So I shushed him and assured him and promised I was always a call away. Any time he needed me, I'd be there.

His mouth pressed into a thin line, but he relented. "A'ight, Sook. Just promise you ain't into any weird, dangerous shit again."

I smiled and lied through my teeth.

Eric listened intently throughout my story. When I finished, he smiled gently, and I could feel an increased tolerance in him for the other people in my life that hadn't been there before. Maybe he was learning that my love for others had no bearing whatsoever on my love for him. Another thing to thank to bonds for. He could feel that I loved him best.

When we finally arrived, I let out a low whistle.

"Dang. You weren't kidding about the spectacle, were you?"

He chuckled as he turned into the gilded gates that led up to a massive mansion on the top of a hill. Every window was lit. The drive was nearly on fire with dramatic torches. It was the middle of the night, but I had to shield my eyes a little.

The palace in front of us put Russell's and Sophie Anne's abodes to shame.

"What is this place?" I asked.

My eyes were glued to it, but Eric barely cast it a glance. "A meeting place. The Authority owns it. It was built twenty years ago for functions like this."

"Is there one in every state?"

"Some states have several."

My head sawed back and forth in wonder. "Huh." The gleam of the white walls caught the light from the fires. The effect was ghostly... A pale, shimmering monument to wealth and power. I cast my mental nets inside. I picked up on a few human minds, but given how many vampire voids I detected, we were very much in the minority. I was guessing that the humans I did sense were probably dinner.

Eric slowed as we reached the valet. A vampire in uniform stood at the driver's side while Eric exited his door and came around to fetch me. I was relieved. Obviously, vampire etiquette meant that servants weren't to touch pets. Given how jealous they could be, this didn't surprise me. But most of all, it meant that I didn't have to refuse his hand helping me out of the car. We wouldn't get very far into the evening if I burned the damned help.

Eric, having already pocketed his driving gloves, casually offered me his elbow. I took it and pulled myself up to his side. His eyes on mine, he disdainfully tossed his keys at the valet. Without a word, he swept me towards the entrance.

"Anything I need to know?" I asked rather belatedly. I was such a dumbass. Why hadn't I asked when we were an hour away?

He shook his head. "Your behavior is perfect, lover. Just stay at my side, use your quaint Southern manners, and stay alert."

I gripped his elbow tighter. "Yes, boss."

We entered the foyer and I had to smother my rubbernecking gawks into mere glances of disinterest. The space opened up into an enormous marble space. The exterior had given the impression that the mansion was like any other, i.e. built for living. Inside, it was clearly nothing but a big, public show off. Twin, curving staircases led to a mezzanine level, which was already filled with elegant guests who stared down at the foyer, eyeing us with the same bored indifference that Eric was deft at returning. The ground floor was equally filled to capacity. Even with our prior knowledge of the event and quick arrival, we were some of the most tardy. I didn't need to read vampire minds to hear the reeling clicks of their brains, noting exactly who was here, exactly when they arrived, and whom they'd brought.

Hackles rose on my exposed neck. The eyes on us only took a fleeting record of the Sheriff of Area Five before they settled with much more interest on me. I was visually frisked up and down, side to side. I stood straighter, welcoming their inventory. I would not cower from their deliberate subjugation of the sheriff's human plaything. I would allow it. I would haughtily ignore it. I belonged to Eric Northman and I didn't give a fuck about their high-and-mighty judgments. Still. For the first time that night, I was grateful for the tiny silver atoms that covered me.

They could stare all they liked. Just as long as they kept their looky-loos in their head and not in their hands.

Eric led us some sort of manned register in the center of the room. Following the red carpet that herded arriving guests, I glanced briefly from side to side, wondering if I might see anyone I recognized.

In the sea of strange faces, I wistfully remembered that many of the few vampires I knew were gone. Bill. Sophie Anne. Edgington. Lorena (thank fuck). Godric. Stan. Longshadow. Really, aside from Isabelle, with whom I had a passing aquaintence, I only knew Eric and Pam. The realization made me sad. In a room full of vampires, we had no allies.

I stood even straighter. All the more reason to present a strong front.

We stopped in front of a smartly dressed vampire with a pen and a huge ledger.

"Name?"

"Eric Northman, sheriff, Louisiana Area Five."

The man ticked off Eric's name, then flicked his eyes towards me.

Eric, mindful not to use his hands, held his elbow out further, displaying me slightly.

"Miss Sookie Stackhouse, my registered and bonded companion."

The vampire's eyes narrowed a little as he scribbled my name alongside Eric's.

"You were expected sooner, sheriff," he said without looking up.

Eric's eyes narrowed in response. "Forgive my lateness. We were fucking."

"Eric!" My cool facade had lasted all of three minutes.

He turned to me indulgently. "Yes, lover?"

My face burned with embarrassment, but I held my tongue. Vampires were direct. They had no real use for euphemisms. Or modesty when it came to sex. I made myself remember that I probably did reek of sex, given how much of it I'd had recently. There was no point in denying it, even if my 'quaint Southern manners' chaffed at the TMI-ness of it. Instead, I forced myself to smile. "Nothing."

With check-in complete, Eric escorted me to the bar at the far end of the room. I was in luck. They actually had refreshments for humans. I ordered a Virgin Mary, hoping to kill two birds with one stone. I didn't want to get tipsy, and I was a little hungry. Since food literally wasn't on the menu, I made due with tomato juice and told myself it was like having gazpacho. Eric, mindful of appearances, ordered a carbonated B negative. The bartender slid it to him in a martini glass.

Our two bloody drinks in hand, we both turned at the sound of a familiar voice.

"Sheriff. Miss Stackhouse. So pleased you could make it." Paulo Domingo, dressed to kill as always, bowed deep.


	35. Chapter 35

**A/N:** I double triple quadruple suck. That's me. I haven't updated in over three months! I'll be shocked if anyone's still even reading this. If you are, I love you and hope you forgive me. Review and let me know you're still out there. Believe it or not, they motivate me. **Eric's POV**

The gathering was exactly what I'd feared it would be. Crowded and boring. As I guided Sookie through the doors and into the main space, I recognized most faces as they glanced at our entry. Knowing me as well as I knew them, their eyes moved dismissively from my face and settled annoyingly on my woman.

She was spectacular. Dressed as she was, she outshone every stunning immortal female in the room, and that was no small feat. Women who represented centuries of enviable beauty. They'd been lovely human specimens, chosen by their vampire makers for their stunning faces and curvy bodies. In death, they remained as perfect as when they were pulled out of the filth of their huts, cleaned off and saved from their rotting teeth, typhoid and inevitable old age. Forever young.

Next to Sookie, however, they were death masks. Pale moons next to the morning sun as it burst onto the horizon and diminished their pale glows to nothing.

As my golden mate walked calmly by my side, I felt myself growing taller. Bigger. Until it felt as though I'd doubled in size. Sookie Stackhouse was perfect. Every head in the room turned to watch her as we passed. I felt her spine propel forwards, showing she was not afraid. I inhaled. Her scent was faint and tainted by her silver jewellery, but under the metal, the air shimmered and laughed as she passed through it. The smell of a healthy woman intertwined with my secret orchard and stash of honeycomb. It could have been mistaken for the world's finest, purest perfume, and I hoped to god that it was.

My kind swarmed all around us. It was imperative that they not know that smell of honey was actually her blood… any more than they could discover my warmed skin, telltale sign that my human had bestowed a Fae gift to me.

Her scent was mine. Her honey blood was mine. And her gift of daywalking, the gift that had allowed me to hear bees buzz for the first time in a thousand years, was also mine.

I copied her impervious posture and took her to the bar.

I wasn't surprised to see him as he slithered up to greet us.

As the top of Domingo's shiny black head dipped in front of me, I concealed my snarl of distaste and my instinct to snatch Sookie away from the vampire that had tried to steal her from me using bullshit diplomatic tactics. Instead, I dipped my chin slightly at his words.

"Of course," I answered. "We are honoured by your invitation."

He straightened, his tux resettling. His eyes rested on Sookie and he smiled gently. He had no idea how close he was coming to losing his head. I wasn't in a celebratory mood.

"I hope we're not keeping you up past your bedtime, Miss Stackhouse," he said.

Sookie kept her Bloody Mary clasped firmly in both hands, not allowing for him to take her hand in greeting, should he have tried. Unlikely, but not out of line. She smiled in return. "I keep darker hours these days, Mr. Domingo. I don't even remember the last time I saw the sun."

"Of course," he replied congenially. "You are a thoughtful companion to become nocturnal. No doubt the sheriff would miss you terribly, should you spend your waking hours in the day."

Bastard. I silently cursed him through my blank expression as he subtly suggested I was moony for my human. True, perhaps, but a dig at my expense nonetheless.

"Oh, I don't know about that," she chuckled. "I think he'd manage just fine. But I'd certainly be miserable."

I almost took her hand to kiss it, she was so adept at saying exactly the right thing. Instead, I nudged my chin in her direction. Almost nuzzling her face, but not quite. "You're so wrong," I sighed dramatically, now that she'd given me room to play the indulgent master. "I would pine for you until I wasted away to nothing."

Sookie laughed softly and shrugged her shoulders at Domingo. "It's a good thing I like pork. I bonded to such a ham."

He watched our display politely. "Indeed."

"So," I mused. "Do I owe you congratulations, Paulo? Are you the man we've all come to honor?"

He put his hands up modestly. "No, no, no," he clipped with Spanish stops. "I am not the new Magister. I'm afraid I lack the talent for such a delicate position."

"Oh?" I replied. "I disagree. You seem a very able statesman."

He smiled wanly at my flattery. "Most kind. However the man chosen to wear the robes is far more capable than I."

Sookie took a nervous sip from her drink. Domingo continued to watch her from the corner of his eye as he spoke. "In fact, he wishes to speak with you."

"Now?"

"Si."

"Before the official announcement?"

He shrugged. "He fears if we wait until after, he won't get the opportunity to discuss a rather serious matter with you. Too many well-wishers and ass-kissers to humour." He waved dismissively at the throng around us.

A serious matter. Fuck. I did not like the sound of that.

"I do not wish to presume," I countered. "I am happy to wait my turn and receive his message after his induction."

He shook his head. "The wish is his. I'm afraid this cannot wait."

He stepped to the side and gestured between the staircases. "Please follow me."

Sookie automatically took both our drinks and set them on the bar before slipping her hand into the crook of my elbow. Just as I'd believed, her etiquette was flawless. One didn't meet a newly-appointed magister while holding a martini. It was disrespectful. Her face was serene. Her mind was swirling with fear. I clenched my arm into my side, squeezing her fingers. I sent calm to her. I nodded to Domingo, who took my sign and began easing our way through the crowd, towards a large yew door just inside the alcove.

Several sets of eyes watched our exit.

I caught a whisper as we passed the sheriff of Louisiana Area One, his eyes slitted with annoyance as he turned towards his vampire companion. "Jesus Christ, he's actually going to do it. The fucking vulgarity of it."

My unease increased. I blocked it from Sookie as best as I could, letting the heavy door shut loudly behind us.

**E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S**

We weren't kept in suspense for long.

Domingo led us into a well-appointed study not too different from my own library. Fifteen feet high, floor to ceiling bookshelves, all filled to capacity with volumes no younger than two hundred years. At the center of the room was a large desk, yew, just like the door we'd just entered, and a leather wingback chair that smelt of Corinthian leather.

Okalo Massawa, attaché to the former Magister, ebony sphinx thousands of years my senior, sat upon it.

He was immaculate. His black tailored suit clung to his wiry frame like a second skin as he sat ramrod straight. His shirt was crisp as frost. He'd placed his hands palms down on the wood in front of him.

Fuck. Fucking, cunting fuck.

I bowed my head to my elder and my probable new Boss of Everyfuckinthing. "Attaché Massawa," I greeted him by his old title. "An honor to see you again."

I held out my arm, indicating Sookie allow me to present her. "You remember my bonded, Miss Stackhouse." It wasn't a question. Vampires forgot nothing.

"Of course. Miss Stackhouse, you look lovely. You could charm the birds from the trees."

To my surprise, Sookie lowered her head and stepped one foot behind the other in a small, graceful curtsey. She'd never performed one to any monarch I'd seen her presented to. Her nimble mind must have realized that while Russell and that redheaded whore weren't worth the spare change in her purse, Massawa was not a vampire with whom to fuck. His demeanour made anyone who wasn't a fool hold their tongue, keep their manners, and offer every courtesy owed.

Sookie bowed because she felt genuine awe.

A sliver of jealousy ran through me. She had not shown any deference to me at our first encounter.

She slipped back to my side, peeking at him from lowered lashes.

"Mr. Massawa," she greeted. She looked up and gave a hesitant smile. "Are you the cause of all the hubbub out front?"

I cracked a smile of surprise, as did the other two vampires. Even when demur, she was just too damn cute.

Massawa nodded fractionally and gestured to the two large chairs identical to his own in front of his desk. "Yes, bird charmer. The Authority has decreed. I have accepted the honor of Magister."

I bowed my head again before sitting, as was expected of me. "Magister," I murmured. "You honor us with your private audience."

Sookie took her seat next to mine, her face expressionless as she gazed at the man who held all vampires' fates in his hands, and by extension, all pets, bondeds, fangbangers, and innocent bystanders. A crook of his finger, and any of the above could be imprisoned, glamoured, tortured, executed. A vampire who fed openly on a human. A pet who grew overly attached and deranged, threatening to cry rape and force feeds because their vampire possessor had discarded them. A fangbanger with Hep D. A small child belonging to them. An old woman who witnessed a vampire's misdeeds. One little crook.

Sookie showed nothing but calm civility.

I swelled with pride. Charmer, indeed.

I allowed myself to settle back, getting just comfortable enough without slouching. Sookie often teased me about my lazy, sexy slouch. I smiled faintly.

Domingo took a second's place directly behind Massawa as his boss began to speak.

"I do not ask you here to honor you, Sheriff. I'm afraid I have called you here to ask a sacrifice of you."

My gut coiled instantly. I kept my smile. My eyes went dead.

Sookie. He wanted Sookie. I'd been stupid to think he couldn't smell her Fae heritage. Stupid to think her honeyed essence didn't fill his head as intoxicatingly as it did mine. Stupid to bring her here. Stupid to offer her up to the hundreds of fucking animals lurking on the other side of the door, just waiting for Massawa to march her right back out there and fill their champagne glasses with her blood.

She was to be his acceptance toast.

His token for their good graces.

My Sookie.

He would take her and I would die trying to stop him. And fail. I'd already failed her at the whore's palace, against inbred wolves no less. I would never succeed against Massawa, never mind a nest of this size. Not even her Light and silver skin would save her.

My mind reeled at an unbidden thought. _Our unborn child would also die…_

I didn't remember Claudine's words about our Fae bond protecting us against such an event, nor did I remember that I'd smote an entire room of vampires who'd tried the very same thing. I was frozen with panic at his ominous tone.

It was only when Sookie placed a shockingly calm hand on my arm, squeezing reassuringly, before I realized I'd been glaring at the man, rudely ignoring his pause where I was supposed to inquire further.

"Oh?" was all I managed.

He raised his elbows to the desk, tenting his fingers. "Sadly."

"And what might that be?"

I made my instant peace with my own death. I would lunge for his throat the moment he said her name. I would lose. But I _would _try.

I took an unneeded gasp when I remembered that my death also meant Sookie's. The instant Massawa tore my head from my body, Sookie would crumple in her seat, her Light snuffed out. My death was her death, her Fae powers had ensured this. It would be a gift compared to what these vampires would inflict upon her, the biting, the rapes, the inevitable draining, but I still ached at the thought of a world without my angel.

Her hand squeezed again. A dulling wave of calm tried to smother my panic. Sookie was desperate for me to keep my shit together. I bit my cheek and waited.

Massawa watched us though black, all-seeing eyes before he finally said. "I need your help, Mr. Northman. My task list is long and unpleasant, and unfortunately, I cannot afford to waste a vampire such as you in a sheriff's position. Two southern states are in chaotic disarray. The Authority wants swift, brutal reestablishment of order, before any unruly vampires take advantage of the vacuum. Your distaste for higher politics aside, I require you to accept the position as King."

Sookie inhaled, soft and sharp.

I blinked. I dared nothing else.

"Of Louisiana?"

"And Mississippi," he replied.

I blinked again.

Sookie let the breath go in a whispered, shaky exhalation. "I shoulda held onto my drink," she said quietly.

I let several seconds pass before proceeding carefully. "There are no monarchs that control two states."

Domingo spoke for the first time. "Would you rather the title of Emperor?"

"Don't get cute, Paulo," Massawa didn't look at him as he admonished.

"I merely point out that it's unprecedented," I said. "This… request of yours." I paused. "It is a request, yes?"

"No monarch has ever been forced," Massawa answered. "They ascend or abdicate as they wish."

I felt locked into his gaze, unable to look elsewhere. "I…Magister, I…"

"Think carefully before you refuse," he suggested.

"I plan to think carefully regardless. Your offer is… unexpected."

For a split second, his gaze flickered to Sookie. I tensed up all over again. "As I say," he replied. "I cannot waste you. You are old. You are rational. You are known to vampires in all states. I need such a man to restore order."

"But why both? Surely there are two vampires whom you trust. To offer me both may not command the respect you hope for. Some might find it… _vulgar_." Just ask the sheriff of Area One.

Massawa didn't react. "I'm not going to take a poll. Nor is my nominee up for debate. Louisiana and Mississippi are sufficiently low in vampire population to be controlled by one man. If any have a problem with your interstate rule, then they can move." A tiny, malicious smile appeared on his lips. "Or they can bring their displeasure to me."

I snorted. Like my rule would upset _anyone_ enough to bitch about it to the Authority directly. Their fangs, their lands and businesses, their pets, their freedom, mattered far more. The Authority had taken more than that for more trifling complaints.

I looked between the two men. "I need time to consider."

"No," Domingo countered. "We're announcing it tonight alongside Massawa's induction. You are free to accept for refuse, but you must decide now."

I bit the inside of my cheek and probed Sookie's feelings. She felt remarkably still, given the topic. She had been so hopeful that we might eventually become forgotten by everyone. Just she and I, working my small establishments, quietly accruing my ever-growing fortune, ignored by the world, laughing and fucking and watching our sunrises. It would have been more than enough for her. Even without Sookie in my life, it had been more than enough for me. Now that I had her, it felt like obscene good fortune.

And obscene good fortune, as always, was too good to be true.

Now she sat, ever the lady with her ankles crossed and making calm eye contact with my would-be coronation committee. The sound of her voice startled me.

"What kind of perk package does a king receive, sir?"

Three pairs of eyebrows raised slightly in surprise. Domingo made a congenial show of his open hands. "It is quite substantial, Miss Stackhouse. You and Mr. Northman would be free to inhabit any of the Authority's domiciles, including this one, or you could choose to live in your own home, though we suggest you consider otherwise, given your need for an extensive security staff. An annual stipend of five million dollars, taxable by the IRS, of course. Permission to retain all current business holdings you may have. Diplomatic, financial and military support from the Authority, within reason. A voice within all council decisions involving the states' welfare. Higher security clearance. Access to most of our records. All perks, as you say, would be outlined by the lawyers when the contract is drawn up."

She nodded, her wide, dark eyes giving her the appearance of a cautious deer once again. I bit my cheek harder. In my human days, I had loved to hunt deer. Their sleek appearance, feminine faces and luminous eyes made for beautiful prey. Sookie turned to me. My lovely doe smiled nervously.

"It sounds… interesting."

The two men smiled at her politeness. Holding her gaze, I gophered into her mind, rooting out its sincerity. To become king (of two states, no less) would catapult us into vampire politics. I would become known on a national level of importance. Sookie would be transported from barmaid and sheriff companion to the enviable and highly-visible station of royal consort. Hiding in obscurity would no longer be an option. We would become mini-celebrities.

And yet, I felt the tentative beginnings of her willingness.

"So… this military support, Mr. Domingo. Why would we need it?" she asked.

Over Massawa's stony shoulder, the Spaniard shrugged. "Should a usurper attempt to take the throne, or should any vampire factions become more trouble than your security team can handle, we would step in."

She recrossed her ankles, leaning forward. "What about other supernatural factions? Like… weres, or like the maenad that attacked Bon Temps? Would the Authority help if any of them caused serious trouble?"

The man shrugged again. "Of course. We do not take kindly to supernatural disruption. They are PR nightmares, often used by humans to incite violence against vampires, since we are the only supernaturals they are aware of. If the monarch deems it worthy of an intervention, he may request assistance."

_Of course. _

Insight broke over me. I instantly felt more relaxed. As I carefully picked through Sookie's calm mood, I realized that this was why she was cautiously optimistic about this new possibility.

Vampires might covet my companion, but an army conscripted to protect us would give any rogue vampires or potential Fae kidnappers a good fucking reason to reconsider. Interlopers like Herveaux. Fairy queens like Mab. Even pathetic shifters like Merlotte. With a royal crest of protection, Sookie would become a far more expensive pursuit. Even speaking to her and invoking a king's displeasure could bring down a wrath too dear for them to even consider.

A calculated risk, but we would be protected.

Perhaps a life in the limelight might be a perk in and of itself.

I turned back to Massawa. "When would my tenure begin?"

"Immediately."

"And we could stay in Louisiana? Not Mississippi?"

"Two residences will be kept for you. The second will be kept in Jackson for business that brings you across the border. Where you reside in Louisiana is your decision, as Paulo said."

I slouched further down. Fuck my poor posture.

"I am inclined to accept."

I waited for a ripple of objection from Sookie, either against my decision or at the slight of not being consulted. Through the strong, twisting rope of emotions between us, nothing rose to the surface. It stayed calm and loving. Her willingness to play the second class citizen in front of vampires was repaid by my silent, heated approval. Holding her tongue helped us. Far from the little hothead I met not so long ago, my mate was fast becoming too wise for her years.

Domingo chuckled dryly. "Is there anything we can do to solidify your inclination into certainty?"

My mind scrolled quickly. Surely there were variables that I wasn't seeing. What enemies would I incur with this promotion? What allies could I solicit? Would this news reach Mab's ears in the Fae realm? Would it cow any plans she might have had for Sookie? Would it exacerbate her ire and fast track her wish to bring Sookie into their world permanently? Would I be able to breach their world if they did? If so, how could I use the Authority's military to wage against her?

Massawa watched me very closely.

At length, he spoke. "Paulo. Leave us."

The Spaniard looked at the stately vampire in front of him. "Magister?"

"Leave. I believe I can persuade Mr. Northman in private."

Domingo hesitated, but then stepped to his superior's side and bowed. "Of course."

As he crossed the room, Sookie rose as well, clutching her purse and offering a small nod to Massawa, assuming he wanted her to leave as well.

Massawa held his hand up and stayed her. "No," he said. "Please sit."

Glancing between the two of us, uncertain, she nodded again and resumed her seat.

Once the door closed, Massawa cocked his head, listening to Domingo's retreat down the hall. When he was satisfied the three of us were sufficiently alone, he stood up, placing his weight on his palms and leaning towards us as if to whisper.

Looking squarely at Sookie, he said, "The silver was a clever ploy, young fairy, but I'm afraid I can still smell you."

Sookie gasped.

I snarled.

My fangs dropped to their fullest length and I rose from my seat like a shot. I'd been right all along. Massawa was too old to fool. Too old to kill. Sookie and I would meet our deaths in this room.

The ancient African merely looked at me. "Calm yourself."

"Fuck you."

"You have no options with me, Viking. You can posture all you like, but if I want you dead, you shall be so. If I want the girl, I can take her. Sit your ass down and comport yourself. We have very little time."

I stayed upright, moving between Sookie's chair and the desk, blocking her from his view. "I said fuck you, Nubian. Try and take her from me and you'll see what happens. She is _mine_!"

He stared me down for several moments. Then, sighing heavily, he sat down himself, leaning back into his chair with the same contempt for erect posture that I maintained. From his slouched position, he gestured to my chair. "I do not want her, Eric. Please retract your fangs and sit."

At my back, Sookie stood up and put her hands on my shoulders. "Eric?" she said softly. "He's right. If you fight, it won't end well for any of us. If he wins, you die. If you win…" she pushed the queen's demise into my head. "…. Well, we'll have a lot of explaining to do."

She was right. If by some miracle, I bested Massawa or Sookie's Radia rose from my body and destroyed him, we still had a horde of vampires on the other side of the door. I couldn't kill all of them, and burning them all into puddles would cause a national outrage in our community. With Herculean effort, I shoved my fangs back into my gums.

Sookie sighed behind me, relieved.

Massawa looked pleased.

Still. I wasn't about to concede that everything was civil and gentlemanly between us. I moved to my chair, but I yanked Sookie from hers and landed her in my lap. There was a momentary sting of silver as my hand touched hers. She came with a yelp, her hands closing over the slits up her thigh and down her cleavage, trying not to pop out of them as she struggled on her very unladylike vampire cushion.

I banded one arm around her, careful not to use my hands, and ripped my driving gloves from my pockets and jammed them on. Now that our little secret was out, there was no need to risk her sitting on her own.

"Eric!" she hissed, scandalized. "Lemme go!"

I glared at Massawa and held her tighter. "Talk," I barked at him.

I gripped Sookie by the waist and willed her to still. She wasn't going anywhere, so she might as well settle down. My lover huffed in defiance, but stopped squirming. Her mental signals had met with a brick wall. She knew I wasn't going to relent. Our host watched with indifference as I grappled with my poison-tipped angel, noting as we silently came to an understanding without words.

He cracked a minute smile. "Ingenious, I must say. The other guests think her jewellery is merely a tasteless joke. Only a vampire of significant age can detect the fainter smell of silver atoms beneath it. Tell me, is there anywhere safe to touch her?"

_Her lips. Her perfect, kissable lips_. "No," I answered coldly. "And I said talk."

His eyes closed briefly, a look of tiredness settling over him. I didn't relax. A vampire his age could rival the speed of light. A look of vulnerability meant nothing when he could kill us both in a thousandth of a second. I doubted even Sookie's Radia could respond to a threat that quickly. So I remained vigilant.

"And I said comport yourself. You have nothing to fear from me." He tapped his chest, giving me a meaningful look. "I would never pit myself against a Radia, sheriff. I am not a fool."

If I'd had a heartbeat, it would have stopped cold. "How…?"

"Another advantage to extreme age. From this distance, I feel as though I'm sitting across from a space heater."

Sookie pushed herself further into me, her mouth dropping in shock. "You can feel that? You can tell that he's warm?"

The Nubian waved his hand. "Yes, Miss Stackhouse. And since I hear no beating heart, I can safely assume you have not revived him." He paused and smiled with a bit more warmth at her. "Your people are powerful, but I doubt you are able to raise the dead. Instead, you've Chosen Eric as your mate. Correct?"

I couldn't think. Couldn't scheme, as Sookie accused. I was frozen in disbelief. How could he know? The secrets of the Fae had been forgotten for centuries. Even members of their own race, like Sookie, were ignorant of them. _How could he know?_ Sookie, mouth still agape, merely nodded. Apparently she too was incapable of guise at the moment.

"You… you know that I'm a fairy. You know about Radia and being Chosen. How…? How do you know? My people… I mean… I mean even Eric had never heard of-,"

"Your people," Massawa scoffed, shaking his head slowly. "Your people are vain creatures. So besotted with themselves and their powers, they often forget that other supernaturals have been around for almost as long as they have."

To my astonishment, he tapped his nose and winked. "To we few, fairies are not as mysterious as they'd like to think."

Sookie fell back completely against my chest. "So… you knew? You knew about us when we first met? This whole time?"

"Be calm, bird charmer. Yes, I knew. Just as I know the true identities of many creatures I meet who delude themselves into believing they are undetectable. For four thousand years, I have witnessed the flourish and extinction of many races. Some once ruled this world. Some, like vampires, slithered through it, cowering in caves, praying for the inattention of man. Creatures of all description and ambitions. I have seen them. You," he pointed at Sookie, "are a welcome sight. I haven't set eyes on a fairy in many, many years."

Sookie gave him a tight half-smile. "Half fairy, sir."

"Of course," he amended. "Half. But a great sight, nonetheless. A pity you are so thoroughly attached. I would have enjoyed hunting you."

There was no malice behind his wistful remark. Merely regret. I hissed loud and angrily anyway, holding my lover by the throat, hiding her pulse from him.

He chuckled dryly. "I mean what I say. I will not challenge a Radia, sheriff. I have seen the result."

Sookie's curiosity pricked my mind. "Really?" she asked. "In another vampire?"

"Noooo," he answered low and long. "I have never seen or even heard of such an unlikely thing as a fairy Choosing a vampire. But I have seen vampires attempt to separate and feed on bonded Fae mates. The result was… unattractive."

Aside from Sookie's heartbeat, the room went quiet as the three of us regarded each other. I felt her raised pulse under my fingers. My thumbs began to circle, one against her jaw line and the other just under her breast. Her ass tensed in my lap at the caress.

"So," she said stiffly. "Uh… what now?"

Massawa raised his brow questioningly.

She swallowed. "Well, you know our little secret, but you seem to be awfully sweet about it. And I'm hoping that we can count on your discretion…" Her pitch went up slightly, as though it were a question.

Brow still up, Massawa nodded. "Disclosing your secret helps no one. Vampires, ignorant of the Radia's destruction, will try to take you. I would incur Mab's wrath for revealing one of her kind. Assassinating the sheriff will only result in your death as well, so no one can hope to possess you by killing your mate. So, yes. You may count on my secrecy."

Sookie's nose crinkled at such a cold, calculated explanation of his silence. I, however, overflowed with relief. Had he flattered us with humble assurances that he would never breathe a word out of the goodness of his heart, or because he respected me, or that mainstreaming prohibited him from challenging another vampire for his mate, I would have begun making plans to have Massawa assassinated. Instead, he'd made it clear that he'd looked at our situation from each angle, seen no advantage, and had decided against our exposure or deaths.

His turn of mind was very similar to my own.

"Then her question remains," I spoke finally. "What now?"

"The situation is exactly the same the moment you came through that door. I need a reliable king for two states. You require a stronger political position, should your companion's heritage become public knowledge. A fairy might be worth challenging a sheriff for, but most will defer the pleasure if they must risk themselves against a king. I see our predicaments as mutually beneficial."

"And this is why you asked me specifically?" His choice made sense now.

He laughed through his nose. "I asked you because the best vampire for the job is smart enough to decline the offer, knowing what a pain in the ass it will be." He gave me a knowing look. "Would you have accepted, were it not for your mate?"

"Fuck, no."

His hand made a small flourish. "Precisely."

I continued to roll the prospect around in my head. Massawa seemed sincere. More importantly, his insight into Sookie's bloodline seemed to stop there. Not once had he glanced at her womb, nor suggested that he detected the smell of a fetus. In that, I felt immense relief. I smelt nothing either, but then again, his nose was three thousand years keener than mine.

My bird charmer spoke from her perch on me. "What about Hadley? Has the Authority made a decision about what do to with my cousin?"

I tensed beneath her. She did not know, but it was bad manners to question superiors about upcoming verdicts or their sentences.

The Magister gave her a kind look. "The queen killer?"

Sookie drew herself up, unflinching. "The kingmaker."

This startled a laugh from Massawa. "I guess she is at that. As far as I am aware, the Authority are still discussing her case." He paused a moment, cutting his eyes to me. "Perhaps this could be an added perk, sheriff?"

"I'm listening."

"The girl is guilty of five vampire deaths. There is no way I can prevent the Authority from finding her so, but perhaps…" he tapped the desk. "Perhaps, for her sentence, they will agree to remanding her to your permanent custody. She would be your responsibility until her natural death, but she would be free. Would that be sufficient?"

Sookie's hope flew up wildly between us, untethered, wings flapping crazily. I flicked my wrist at him. "I need a guarantee. If you can promise me Hadley, then I'll accept your offer now."

He brought his hands together and struck them twice in opposing directions. "Done."

He rose. "I'm afraid I must go mingle with the crowd before the announcement. In twenty minutes, I expect you by my side at the podium." He smoothed out his suit. "I would suggest you take the time to mark your companion, Eric. Silver aside, she smells devastating. It would be wise to find a clean spot and bite." Suit adjusted, he walked towards the door. "They are not all as civilized as we."

The door shut quietly behind him.

The charmer and I were alone.

Sookie expelled a breath that she'd been holding for at least ten minutes.

"Jesus God Almighty," she sighed, getting up from my lap and standing above me. "Tell me I just hallucinated that whole thing."

"I'm afraid not. I'm as shocked as you."

"Oh, I doubt that very much," she scoffed quietly. Leaning down, she kissed me on the cheek. "You saved Hadley. And Hunter. Again. Thank you, Eric."

I stifled the urge to nuzzle her back, knowing it wasn't safe. "Pay me back. Make her marry the wolf."

She stood up with a laugh. "Don't worry. I'm already working on it."

She sighed again and walked two steps to the desk. She turned and placed her hands backward on it, vaulting herself to sit between the Tiffany lamps. With company gone, she crossed her legs at the knee, her slinky dress falling open over her smooth, bare legs. She leaned back.

"So," she chirped conversationally. "King, huh?"

I bowed deeply to her from my seat. "My queen."

She laughed again. "No, sir. None of that queenie talk for me. It's bad enough to be a 'royal consort'. God, that sounds sleazy. I sound like some ordained whore, entrusted to keep the king from contracting blue balls." She shuddered in disgust.

Smirking, I stood up. "You _will_ accept the title, your displeasure aside. You have no idea how deeply it's respected in my world. Yes, it implies that you are entrusted with fucking me, but it's also an untouchable station. I would never be expected to share you. I could legally kill anyone who even looked at you without my permission. Your freedom—or rather my freedom as your master—is absolute. I can display you to everyone and drag you to every function, or I can hide you away in a locked room, never seeing another living soul."

I grinned when she stuck her tongue out at me. I placed my gloved hands over her bare knees, gently prying them open. She let her thighs part, her dress sliding up around her hips as I slid between them.

No panties. She bit her lip at her sudden exposure, eyes dipping shyly.

"My point, Sookie, is that we are free to act as we please. No behaviour is unseemly. You are no one's inferior."

I bumped her naked pussy with my clothed, pounding dick. "Except mine."

She jolted at our contact. Her brow arched in challenge. "So I owe fealty to you, is what you're saying? Like everyone else?"

"Nothing like everyone else."

Her brow climbed higher as my black index fingers traced her lovely collar bones. "I'm afraid you owe me far more, and more often, than any of my subjects."

"That a fact?"

I bumped her again. Harder this time. She gasped, leaning back further on her hands. My gloved fingers dragged the silky red fabric to the outer swells of her breasts, baring her feminine body even more to me.

Her heart was racing. Her mind was trying not to capitulate to my touch as I partially undressed her. "L-looking for a clean spot?" she stammered. "Going to mark me so everyone can see? Like a monogram on your luggage?"

I traced her bare breasts slowly, swirling in ever-decreasing circles until I reached her peaked nipples. She mewled when I pinched them softly. "No," I answered. "I won't bite you in this place. The scent of your blood is too much to risk."

Her eyes fluttered. "Then what are you doing?"

Still massaging one breast, I opened my fly with the other hand, releasing myself just inches away from her. "_I_ am accepting your fealty," I replied. I took a great risk and guided myself to her folds. She whimpered in fear for me. As our skin touched, my hopes were vindicated. She hadn't sprayed the silver this deeply between her legs. "_You_ are doing your job."

I pushed into her a single inch.

Both of us moaned. It had been twenty-four hours since we'd made love. Coming against each other's mouths like we had that morning was satisfying, but nothing soothed my feral soul more than when her tight, hot Heaven embraced me. One day had felt like eons. I groaned as once again, I discovered total enlightenment in the body of my mate.

"Eric," she whispered, arching off the desk, scared to touch me, yet compelled to offer herself.

Knowing it was safe, I sank into her until she had all of me. "My queen," I whispered back. And she was. My queen. My goddess. My absolutely everything.

I grabbed her hips and plunged again. And again. And again until I lost myself to the hard, angry rhythm we chose. She brought one hand up to stroke down my buttoned shirt. I was riveted to the bounce of her tits and didn't pay attention when she undid three of them and leaned forward.

"Here's my fealty." She parted the fabric and kissed my chest. She kept her lips perfectly still. I paused my thrusts, as deep inside her as possible, and looked down at the top of her head. She broke away with a wet smack and looked at the perfect red kiss she stamped on my skin.

Smiling proudly, she leaned back again, her eyes never leaving mine as she slowly dragged of my hands away from her waist and up to her mouth. Staring over the back of my hand, she gently bit the end of my middle finger, catching the leather between her teeth. Holding my wrist in her other hand, she drew the glove off my hand.

I reared back and shoved hard into her again, unable to take the sight of her seducing me so expertly. She let out an adorable little squeak as her pussy stretched wider to accommodate my roughness. Turning her head, she opened her mouth and dropped my glove.

"You don't have a ring for me to kiss," she noted, looking at my pale hand. "I guess I'll have to give you one."

With that, she rolled her hips, answering my thrusts, and sucked my ring finger deep into her hot little mouth.

"Fffffffuck," I hissed low and angry. My head tipped back and I succumbed to my instincts. Still holding her hip with one hand, I skipped making love and gave into a hard, pounding fuck. My mind shut down completely, too consumed with experiencing Sookie's hot, wet suction in two places at once.

Her tongue swirled around me. Her inner cheeks smoothed along my skin. Her pussy rippled and shimmered around my desperate cock.

"Love you," I choked out. "My queen. My angel. My glorious…perfect…_wife_!" I roared as I came, marking her exactly as I'd intended as my seed filled her up and imprinted her with the smell of Eric Northman, her royal possessor.

Sookie sobbed, releasing my finger from her mouth and grabbing my lapels, burying her face in my clothes as she ripped and burned and tore her way through her own climax.

Mine. And the whole world would know. _Minemineminemine!_

Her legs were wrapped around me. I trembled and blinked profusely, trying to regain my sight as I came down from another unfathomable high. Sookie panted against me, her face pressed against my black suit, shying away from my ungloved hand.

I needed to hold her.

My protected hand slid up her back. I snaked my other arm around her exposed neck. I dropped my face next to hers. So close. Never close enough.

"I love you," I repeated. "All of this, I do for you." I put my lips as close her ear as I dared and whispered. "For our child. If you carry him. I do this for him as well."

I was coming to grips with the idea. No longer did I look at the implausibility of it. If it was a fact and I had impregnated my soul mate, then he was mine as much as she was. And to be mine meant that my undead heart belonged to him as much as it did his mother. To be mine meant that he would be protected, come hell or high water. Just like his mother, he tore my love from me without even trying. The possibility of him was enough. I was his.

Sookie shivered slightly, adrenaline buzzing through her veins.

"My king," she whispered against me. "You've always been my king. From the moment we kissed all those months ago. I… I've felt that way." She looked up at me. My startled little doe. "I hope I am," she breathed. "I hope I'm pregnant. I want to give him to you."

My body raged in displeasure as I slowly withdrew from her. As I zipped myself up, Sookie very carefully rebuttoned my shirt and smoothed my tie, her secret, red fealty nestled next to my heart. I drew her dress back over her breasts with one hand. I backed away enough to let her jump down and smooth out the long skirt. She looked as untouched as when she entered. Only vampires would know she'd been recently fucked. And fucked well.

She bent down and retrieved my glove, handing it to me as I stuffed them into my pockets.

Her heart was still racing as she took my elbow and pointed us towards the door. "Do you think he suspects?" she murmured.

I willed the need for silence into the bond. We couldn't discuss it here. For all we knew, Massawa had cameras in this room. I didn't care if he'd filmed us fucking, but I wasn't about to muse about Sookie's possible pregnancy.

She nodded at my suggestion.

As I waved my hand at the door, indicating we should exit, she chuckled.

I looked at it and realized that she'd done exactly as she'd said. On my right ring finger was a perfect band of red lipstick. The king's ring. Only instead of kissing it, she'd created it by blowing my finger while performing her other duty as consort.

For a split second longer than I should have, I considered keeping it.

"You are dangerous," I scoffed, wiping the lipstick off with my silk handkerchief.

She smiled her wide, happy smile. The one that made her look like a little girl, free of care. "Just doin' my part for king and country."

As we left the library, I could hear Domingo's voice as he began his keynote speech. Massawa's induction was under way. In a few minutes, he would be named Magister. As part of his acceptance speech, I would be named King of Louisiana and Mississippi.

Sookie's kiss still felt warm on my chest. I focused on the feeling, determined to let it center me as I bore the rest of the night.

"I love you, too," my fairy whispered as we entered grand foyer. Several heads turned in our direction, but most stayed intent on the Spaniard and the Nubian as they stood on a stage in the middle of the cavernous space. In a room full of supernatural hearing, she added, "My king."


	36. Chapter 36

**A/N: **It wasn't three months, but I'm still pretty sucky. Dr. Ludwig's visit is up in the next chap! Sookie's POV

A week passed after the Authority's announcement about Eric's ascension to the twin throne of Louisiana and Mississippi. As Eric had wearily predicted, it threw us into a spotlight that neither of us would have wished on even the keenest media whore.

For starters, there were the brown nosers. Thousands of them. They lined up around the block at Fangtasia to pay their new king his fealty, which of course was required by all vampires in some form or another (a cordial email or pretty trinket would have done just as well), but it seemed nearly every vampire in five hundred miles felt it necessary to come to Shreveport, cow tow into the bar, and dry hump Eric's last nerve with their smarmy oaths of everlasting loyalty. In our stolen moments when we laid out in the sunshine, miles away from Shreveport and deep in the long grass, he would caress my bare back while he seethed that those idiots hadn't even bothered to change the wording to the exact same oath they'd sworn to Sophie Anne and Russell.

I didn't point out that Eric had been responsible for both of their demises and it was a damn good thing none of these idiots had stepped up to help their "beloved" monarchs.

When I felt his disgust begin to boil over, I placed little baby kisses on his chest and sent him soothing thoughts until he settled down and went back to basking in the light with me. On the one occasion when he'd had a particularly trying forty-five minutes with a sycophant who refused to leave without burrowing up Eric's ass, I had to up my ante. I'd laid him down in one of our many secluded forest hideouts, taken my pendant blade and nicked his inner thigh. His snarling anger turned to into gritty Swedish moans as I sipped and nibbled and licked. After that, he managed to keep a less dour outlook as he bore through the procession.

The second thing he was forced to deal with was the prospect of his coronation. He flatly refused. The Authority insisted that all monarchs were required to receive their new rank with all of the official pomp and ceremony. Vampires did enjoy a good public ritual. But my vampire, as usual, didn't follow the fold.

"No," he repeated to Domingo as the Spaniard stood in the middle of his back office.

He cast a glance at me as I tried to make myself invisible reading a book on the sofa. Eric was slouched so far down in his chair that he was in danger of slithering under his desk.

"I'm afraid we must insist. All monarchs must be presented. It will mollify your subjects that order has indeed been restored."

"They don't need a cake to know it's my birthday, Paulo. I didn't ask for a Sweet Sixteen. And I don't need the fucking headache of being strutted around like a debutante, preening for the hard-ons who are hoping for a titty squeeze in the coatroom. My subjects _know_ I'm king. If they need me for an actual reason, they know where to find me."

I smothered my smile at the mental picture and lifted my book higher, hiding my face. I hadn't processed a single word of it since Domingo had entered over ten minutes ago.

Domingo made a gutteral noise of impatience. "Many will take it as an insult, like you're too good for your own constituents. Others will see it as a sign of weakness, that you don't fully embrace your appointment. Is this what you want?"

"I want to run my kingdoms," Eric countered coldly. "As you recall, I was given a rather large piece of real estate to manage. I can't govern effectively if I have to stand up for a verbal blowjob every half hour. I plan to make it clear from the beginning; Everybody get back to work and don't waste my fucking time unless there's cause. That means no coronation. No orgies. No pool parties with jacuzzis filled with blood. No granting of royal favors. And no fucking court." He paused. "I'm offering the Authority the most boring, efficient, law abiding kingdom in the country. How does that tickle you, Domingo?"

My fingertips bit deeper into the cover. Lord, but he made it hard for me to keep my shit together and not laugh my ass off in front of a VIP. The blur of dense words in front of me blocked my view, but the silence the followed felt tense.

At last, the man sighed. "The Magister will not be happy."

"I have every confidence in your ability to sell my views."

I risked a peek over my book.

Domingo caught it. With a slight bow, he signalled the end of their meeting. "I trust you will glamor your companion. Our conversations are intensely private, Majesty. I'm sure you understand."

Eric made an equal bow of his head, pulling off sincerity with a master liar's skill. "If you wish. My Sookie is completely trustworthy, but if it assuages your concern. I'll take care of her once you're gone."

I managed not to react either way. Domingo looked doubtfully between us. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather do it now?"

Eric made a magnanimous gesture in my direction. "You may do it yourself, if you fear I'm disingenuous."

Goddammit. My ability to keep a straight face had never been so sorely tested in my life. Somehow, I managed to look up at Domingo, the picture of total acceptance to whatever these vampire men decided regarding my memory.

Luckily, the offer seemed to reassure him. He waved it off. "No, no need, _mi rey_. I am sure you keep your house in excellent order."

He turned without further ado and left the room, the door clicking into place behind him.

I began idly fingering a calla lily, which was sitting in a small glass vase by my seat. I blinked rapidly. "What just happened? Where are we? Who are you and what do you want with me?"

He snorted and flicked an offending piece of paper away from his hand. "I just sold you to the Seasame Street count. You're his now." He undulated his fingers magically at me. "You will _not_ mock his constant counting or fag opera cape. You'll be a good pet. A _goooood_ pet." His crooning made my lips crack wide open.

I picked up the flower, tracing my own face with its soft body. "Yes, Eric. Though I'm lodging a complaint. I'm pissed at being traded down the royalty ladder. From a king to a count? Tongues will wag about my inability to please you."

He watched as my flower slid down my cheek. Under my chin.

I hid my smile behind it.

Eric may have been extremely busy, but that didn't mean I suffered a single second of neglect as his companion. We still made love every day. He still brought me with him everywhere he went, provided I wanted to go (of course I did). He asked my opinion on many things, like the contents of his contract as king, new regime changes, his wardrobe, plans for where we would live, possible punishments for lawbreaking vampires, and he asked for it no matter who was present.

But, most of all, he remained a sneaky sumbitch.

After I received an avalanche of African daisies the day after his appointment, I gave him a real earful about thrift and overkill. He delighted in my scolding and what he deemed my "pointless austerity", and decided to buck against it. Hard.

Hence, his home and office became a minefield. I'd be pulling out socks from a drawer, or looking for a spoon, or helping him with small administrative jobs like filing, and I'd stumble across a strategically placed photograph. At first, they were always flowers. I found a picture of Bells of Ireland taped to my toothbrush. Smiling with puzzlement, I admired the pretty green flowers, then set the photo aside and cleaned my teeth. The next day, the same damn thing happened with Bells of Ireland as it had with daisies. Some poor delivery guy kept showing up every few hours, bent under the weight an arrangement of nothing but bells. I thanked him every time, then started apologizing after the fourth time he knocked on the door. By the end of the day, I had over two hundred stems.

I cursed Eric's name right to his face. Nothing but oily pride met my anger.

The next night, I found a picture of a single red rose tied to Kitty Eric's collar when he jaunted downstairs for his dinner. I cocked my head at the photo, nonplussed by the stately stem with its crimson, slightly dropping head. It had never been a favorite of mine. I'd always kinda seen them as a lazy fallback for men who didn't put much thought into what they gave their sweethearts for Valentine's Day. Like they were the closest flower to the door, no need to venture further into some girly florist, just grab a dozen, toss the lady two crumpled twenties, and be done with the whole emasculating experience. It seemed a crime, given all the other beautiful flowers in the world. There was just no imagination in a rose, only precedent. I shrugged, unhooked the picture from my cat, and fed him.

No roses came the next day.

What did appear was another photo. This one of calla lilies. I instantly warmed and smiled when I saw it tucked away under my pillow. It had always been Gran's favorite and I thought of her every time I saw one. Their large, singular petals reminded me of her simple, kind grace. I felt my eyes well with unshed tears as I held it by its corner and traced over their white coned bodies. My biggest regret in the whole world was losing Gran too early. I kissed the photo and put it back under my pillow.

By the end of the next day, I was bombarded with calla lilies. Five hundred at least. They came in boxes. In vases. In pots for the garden. White. Pink. Yellow. Orange. And the final bouquet, in which the lilies were so purple they were almost black. With so many bullhorn-shaped blooms, I could almost hear Gran chuckling at the silliness of it all, amused as all getout that "_my beau sure was sweet on me_".

My tears got the better of me. I didn't yell at Eric that day.

My ridiculous, wonderful vampire had been reading my moods, gauging my interest in each bloom as I found his little visual cues. He knew that if he'd asked me again for my preference, I wouldn't have told him since he'd go crazy and buy me too many. But I couldn't hide my reaction from him when confronted with pretty images. Not anymore, anyway. Sly bastard.

Now I was finding pictures everywhere. Several a day. And not just flowers anymore, much to my dismay. I found several magazine cutouts of sports cars. Glossy eight-by-tens of diamond chokers and ankle bracelets. A pamphlet on how to care for horses. A map with the entire Caribbean Sea circled.

Every time, I slammed my eyes closed, shut down the bond as best I could while trying not to think about ponies and tropical islands, and put the offending little snitch into a drawer in my nightstand. I'd tried several times to throw them away, but I found the sentiment behind the trickery too wonderful. I'd keep the photos. The limp, shiny paper meant more than the advertized products ever could.

Behind my closed eyes, I could feel him, his eyes narrowing into shrew little slits. "No one doubts that you please me," he said quietly. "I'd fuck you on my throne in front of hundreds, if you'd let me."

I smirked. "No, you wouldn't." No. He wouldn't. Not anymore. Not since he fell in love with me. Not since he'd developed one helluva jealous bone whenever someone so much as looked at me. I'd bet five hundred lillies on it.

Across the room, he snorted. "Perhaps not."

Tenting his fingers, he changed the subject. "Are you worried about later?"

I tossed my unread book aside and stretched my arms above my head. "Yes," I said simply.

Rising from his desk, he took two large steps and he was suddenly above me, looking down with a pensive expression. I craned my neck until my head was between my shoulders. "Aren't you?"

He blinked. "I don't know."

"Dr. Ludwig is coming to the house tonight and might inform you that you're my baby's daddy. That doesn't sit weird with you at all?"

"Of course it does. But she might also tell me that my mate is perfectly healthy and childless." He paused. "We will not suggest to her that any child you may carry is mine, Sookie. I will not expose him to the supernatural world's scrutiny. As far as anyone will ever know, he will be a human child, born of human parents."

I tugged at his hand, indicating he sit by me and give my neck a rest. He did so. My worry was steadily increasing at the hard lines around his mouth. I squeezed his fingers. "I don't want the supernatural world thinking that I stepped out on you, Eric. I'd have trouble not killing anyone who accused me of cheating on the man I love."

"I'd save you that trouble," he promised. "I'd tie their legs into fucking Winsdor knots as punishment. But our bonding is recent and our relationship is new. I'll make sure it's known that you were with child before we came together."

I pouted. He smiled. "I'll simply tell everyone that you were so sick with love for me that you balled some blonde stranger just to dull the pain. That you tried so hard not to scream my name as he fucked you... and failed miserably."

I stuck my tongue out. "I failed not to scream your name? Or he failed to fuck me?"

"Given how perfectly you suit me, Sookie, I imagine _everyone_ failed to fuck you properly before me."

"We are not going there. You know there was only one other before you, and I won't speak ill of the dead."

"So he _did_ fail to fuck you properly?"

I inhaled slowly, gazing at his lap. "He was a kind introduction to the sport. That's all I'm going to say."

I didn't like talking about Bill. Especially about my intimacy with him. Eric, to an extent, had given me my past and my feelings for him without too much jealous interference. But on this subject, he tipped my chin up until I met his chilly, demanding eyes. "I'm the only one who can fuck the Radia out of you."

After everything we'd shared, it still amazed me how often he wanted to hear my devotion. "Yes. You're the only one," I echoed. "My perfect fit."

Satisfied, his eyes grew warmer. A comfortable silence filled the space between us as he continued to finger my jaw and throat. I felt the slow, familiar surge of hunger well up in his mind as my fairy blood teased him from under my skin. I let him play for a little while, then spoke.

"Hungry?"

He grunted, staring intently at the spot under my ear where he liked to bury his face and breathe for long periods of time.

Instead of crawling into his lap, I scooted down into the cushion and pulled him to lie down partially on top of me. He propped himself up on one elbow, then allowed the rest of his body to melt onto mine. I felt his surprise at my positioning. Sitting on him was my usual move. But right now, I wanted the comfort of his heavier, broader frame around me. I arched my back, adjusting under the weighty warmth that enveloped me. With my breasts and belly pressed under his torso and his head just under mine, I turned to look at his desk.

He rumbled with pleasure, nuzzling into my pulse.

A click. A nip. And a long sigh that was mine.

Just like always, the beehive of Eric's thoughts was brought to a standstill. Suddenly he was blank with pleasure. The shock of the perfect food dulled his sharp mind and dazzled his ancient soul. I murmured happily, my hands smoothing over the dense ripples of his back. This got me every time. Every time he fed, he rejoiced. Even the coldest, most calculating facets of his character flipped onto their backs and purred, letting my blood tickle their bellies. He'd said it before- I made him drunk.

My eyes fluttered shut. I felt so wonderfully warm and squished.

A rough hand moved out of my hair and trailed my body until it found the hem of my dress. I felt it slither beneath the fabric and I couldn't help but giggle. He really was insatiable.

But my giggle didn't last long. He bypassed my panties entirely, his palm claiming my stomach. The tips of his fingers pressed into my flesh. He growled with lust into my ear, his hand pressing meaningfully between my hipbones.

"Mine," he muttered absently between sips.

"No shit."

"No," he disengaged and licked my throat. He had started softly bucking and butting into me. "Him," he pressed harder on my tummy. "He's _mine_."

A small gust of air left my lungs and I was pushed into the sofa and snuggled by a vampire king who seemed too dazed to hear himself. I petted up and down his ribcage, agreeing silently. If there was anything for the good doctor to find, whatever it was, it was most certainly Eric's. As I traced the steely ridges of his battle-hardened body, I wondered if the baby would take after their skyscraping, beautiful father.

God willing.

"You keep claiming Stackhouses at this rate, you'll have a menagerie."

He pushed me further into the couch. "He's a Northman."

"We could hyphenate it. Stackhouse-Northman."

"Fuck you. My semen, my rules."

"Um, do I even need to point out that your semen is currently rent dodging in my womb? _ My_ uterus, _my_ rules."

I gasped as my dress was ripped open right up the center (again!) and Eric slid down my body and hunched territorially over my belly. I lost his attention as he dove nose, eyes, cheeks and ears on my bellybutton. Sniffing, listening, searching for a bump that wasn't there, he was nonetheless confident.

"I'm king of all I survey, goddammit. Louisiana is mine. Mississippi is mine. Hadley's mine. Hunter's mine. Pam is mine. You are mine. And this," he kissed into my stomach, "is absolutely mine."

"No one's disagreeing, your majesty. In fact, no one would touch that assorted collection of WT except you."

It was a lie and we both knew it. On paper, the poorest southern states and the Stackhouse clan weren't much to look at, but no ambitious vamp would turn down a monarchy and no vamp on earth would pass up my family once they got a whiff of us. Still, I couldn't not tease him. Not when he rankled so easily when I undersold myself.

"Besides," I continued quickly. "This might turn into much ado about nothing. My period is due in a few days. If the doctor can't tell us anything, Aunt Flo sure as hell will."

I looked down at him, hoping to coax the Sookie Smile out. He gazed back at me quizically, his eyes skipping over my exposed body, falling short of my eyes and landing on my neck.

I gave him a questioning look. "What?"

He lifted slightly, staring. "Your throat."

I put my hand over where he'd bitten. It felt fine. "What about it?"

"My mark is gone."

My fingers traced over where he'd bitten me. There was no seeping blood, no holes, nothing but smooth skin. "So what?"

"I didn't heal you."

Now he had my attention. I rose up on my elbows. "You must have. It's completely healed and I haven't had _your_ blood in two days."

He didn't answer, merely continued to stare at me with unnerving seriousness.

I bucked beneath him. "Scoot off."

He lifted slightly and I wiggled out from under him, holding the ragged pieces of my dress together and I grabbed my purse from the floor and rooted around for my compact. "You sure you just didn't notice when you pricked your finger? You kinda go ga-ga when you feed."

From the couch, he watched me like a hawk. "Your blood is heaven, lover. Not Rohypnol. I don't black out when I taste you."

I found my mirror and flipped it open. Pulling my hair back, I examined my neck carefully, angling the compact this way and that, seeing nothing but a tiny smear of blood where Eric had licked me. The bite itself was gone. I bit my lip in confusion. Eric fed me his blood often and liberally, but not even that would explain how I healed in a matter of minutes when my last sip had been forty-eight hours ago.

I snapped the case shut.

"Well, I guess we can just chalk it up to your blood and our bonds. We get another bonus. Sookie healing powers. Yay Team Stackhouse-Northman."

He didn't move and looked totally unconvinced. "We'll ask the doctor about that as well," he said dryly.

"Fine." I checked my watch. "It'll be dawn in a few hours. You should oversee closing."

Muttering under his breath, he rose and went into the storage area to fetch me another box with another pretty dress in it, which never seemed to run out, no matter how many he ruined. As I took the box and thanked him, I suspected that Pam was in charge of keeping the dress pool filled to capacity. I took off the lid and peeled back the tissue paper.

I looked up at him. "Another one?"

He looked over at the identical dress that he'd given me the first time he'd torn my dress in his office. Nude color, slimming cut, softest material I'd ever felt. He shrugged and pulled his leather jacket over his t-shirt. "I didn't get to enjoy you in the first one."

I slipped off my tattered sundress and pulled the nude one up my hips. I angled into the halter top and twirled for him. "Still like it?"

He pointedly didn't turn as he paused at the door before stepping out into the bar. His back tensed up. His head turned just enough so that I could see his profile, but not his eyes. "You're so beautiful, even looking at you tests me. Stand with Pam behind the bar. Hopefully they'll be no more wellwishers tonight and everyone else will just go the fuck home."

He turned his head back to the door and spoke to it. "Please, my angel."

There was a tiredness in his voice, a longing to only be with me, that made me ache. "Okay," was my only reply.

He nodded gratefully and strode out, Angry Vampire Get-the-Fuck-Out-My-Way King Eric stomping up to his throne and sitting disdainfully. The crowd was still in full swing. Humans scattered from his path. Vampires lowered their heads. Eric flicked his hand, a simultaneous Fuck You and As You Were signal. The crowd went back to drinking and hunting.

I slid behind the bar. Pam greeted me with a nod.

I sat demurely on a stool by the liquor bottles as Pam took a portly woman's order for a Bloody Mary. How original. Pam kept her eyeroll in check as she dutifully mixed V8 and Tobasco while I handed her the vodka.

"How's business?"

She slid the glass over to the woman, ignoring her awed gaze at being served by the couture dead. "Less fun that eating fairy all night."

"I'm not the only one in the world, you know. If you want one of us so bad, go fuck your own tinkerbell."

She snarled. "Would that I could. What kind of fucking suicidal fairy would come to where I work all night?"

I smiled. "Poor baby. Try Craig's List."

"Fuck you, glitter cunt."

I chuckled, watching Eric as his fingers flicked dizzyingly over his phone keypad, his slouched frame all but oozing his irritation at his surroundings. My phone buzzed in my clutch purse. I took it out and opened the envelope.

I grinned. Eric had sent me an emoticon. Two little wings flapping gently. They looked just like angel's wings, except instead of pearly white, they were black as a bat's. I quickly pulled up a smooching kiss emoticon and sent it back.

Pam had glanced over casually as she pulled out a leather ledger by the till to update inventory. "Bat wings?"

I shook my head. "Angel wings. Eric calls me his angel all the time, though Christ knows why. I'm about as far from angelic as you can get. I kill, I cuss, I have terrible thoughts about some people, I have tons of sex out of wedlock. God'll set me down for a loooong talk when I finally meet him. Still, Eric insists I'm an angel." I looked down at his message again. "I don't know why the wings are black, though. Just him bein' vampy, I 'spose."

Pam gave me a strange look before flipping the ledger open and finding the page she needed.

I cocked my head at her. "What?"

She gave a small shrug, scribbling faster than I could detect. "Nothing."

"You have a look."

"Then don't look at me."

"Quit being a bitch and tell me what you're thinking."

She turned towards me and put her hand on her hip. "Fine," she drawled, looking over to Eric and jutting her chin at him. "You got the wrong end of the angel stick, that's all."

"Meaning what, exactly?"

Having stifled her eyerolls all night for the rubes, she gave me one that nearly popped them from their sockets. "Meaning when Eric calls you an angel, Sweetie Cakes, he isn't referring to your retarded Christian angels that fell out of Walt Disney's ass. He means you're _his_ angel. A Viking angel."

She drew a peeved breath. "His valkyrie."

I squinted at the word. She saw my incomprehension.

"Look," she said. "When Eric turned me, the first thing he did was teach me his mother language. That included Norse mythology. In Old Norse, valkyrie literally means 'Chooser of the slain'. They're the female angels that decide who lives and dies in battle. If a warrior is Chosen, he's taken to Valhalla, or Viking Heaven. There, they often become lovers. The Valkyrie offer them mead, made from the finest honey in the world."

Her gaze cut quickly to my throat before she continued.

"To be Chosen by a valkyrie is the highest honor a Viking warrior can hope for. She'll fuck him silly and feed him ambrosia for all eternity as a reward for his bravery in life. Viking men believed their valkyries watched over them in life in the form of ravens."

She slowly closed the ledge before sliding it back against the cash register. She finally looked at my shocked expression before panning to look at her grumpy maker as he cracked a Sookie Smile at the cartoon kiss I sent him.

"Black wings," she concluded softly.


	37. Chapter 37

**A/N:** ...Four months later. At last. I've finally given birth, the parents have finally left, and I'm slowly starting to feel human again. I owe all of you a HUGE apology for going on hiatus without saying so. Honestly, I didn't plan to. I wanted to write every single day. But my pregnancy was miserable and my other little guy was a nutcase, so I kept putting it off. I have two little ones now, but I fully plan to go back to the writing regime I used to have, which was around once a week. I thank each and every one of you who reviewed me, wrote me, and kept checking my page in hopes of an update. You're the whole reason I do this. And now, on with the show... Eric's POV

Small, leathery hands moved methodically over her soft, toned belly.

I kept my fangs in check. The good doctor was doing her job and nothing else. She had no interest in Sookie as she asked my lover to strip out of her clothes and lie on my sofa as she performed her physical. Sookie had balked at removing her clothes. I had balked at doing this in my office at Fangtasia instead of our comfortable bed at home.

Sookie had scolded me for "telling the whole dang tri-state area" where I rested.

Doctor Ludwig scolded Sookie for "imagining she gave a fuck about modesty and she wasn't paid by the hour, so take'em off so she could examine Sookie properly".

I had relented and told Ludwig to meet us after closing.

Sookie, equally chagrinned, removed her dress and stood in her underthings, waiting for Ludwig to instruct her.

I watched from behind my desk, noting every fingerprint that woman left behind on her lovely skin. I must have growled quietly as the doctor moved from listening to her heart between her breasts with a stethoscope to leaning over her stomach, prodding gently with expert fingers.

"Be quiet, vampire," she admonished distractedly. Her eyes never left her task. "I'm not copping a feel."

I knew that. I even liked the woman. She was so dismissive and surly towards my kind, showing no fear whatsoever, instead more of a mother-in-law's irritation. She reminded me of Sookie in that, never imagining for one second that I might be so rude as to kill her for speaking to me frankly. I huffed, my eyes sliding to the floor, silencing the vibrations in my chest.

Sookie watched nervously, her fingers fisting and twirling around each other as she kept her arms stiffly at her sides. Even her mind felt sweaty with anticipation. I sent her calm, petting our bond and slowly ridding it of its slimy, worried essence. Sookie nodded, feeling my influence. To break the silence, she asked the doctor about her bite earlier this evening and why it had healed so quickly. Ludwig merely grunted and scribbled some notes. "I'll look into it," was all she said, and carried on with her checkup.

Sookie needn't have felt so worried.

Whatever the doctor found in her, no matter her diagnosis, Sookie was going to be fine. I would ensure it. She could stand up and calmly inform us that Sookie was carrying a litter of puppies. We would handle it.

It felt like an eternity, but after measuring all of her vital signs and taking two vials of blood from Sookie's arm and a cup of her urine, the doctor collected her things (including the twelve pregnancy sticks that Sookie had tested over the week with blank results) and told Sookie she could dress.

"Well?" I asked.

"Congratulations, Northman. You have a very healthy human pet. Remarkably so."

"She's not my pet, and I'm not paying you two thousand dollars to tell me what I already know."

Ludwig eyed me warily. As her bag snapped shut, she shouldered it and moved to sit down in the chair on the other side of my desk. Without asking. Fucking precious.

"If I find that she is actually pregnant, I need your word that you won't terminate the child."

The bond spiked with Sookie's astonishment. "What?!"

The ancient woman didn't break eye contact with me. "She's your companion. Your royal consort even. But if she's pregnant with another man's child, I need you to swear to me that you won't go all male lion and kill a cub that isn't yours." She gave me a disdainful twist of her lips. "Your kind are irrationally territorial, but you seem to have a little more brains than the rest. Swear to me that the child, if there is one, will be born, and that once so, plans will be in place to care for it."

I flicked a brow at her presumption. "You dictate no terms for those plans, then?"

She barked a mirthless laugh. "I have no illusions. You'll do as you damn well please. If the girl wants an abortion of her own free will, then so be it. If she wants to raise the baby under your roof, then God help her. If she wants to give the baby to a relation or adoption agency, then I put my hand up right now in support for it. The point is that she chooses. And the infant isn't killed by your hand, or groomed for food. Those are my terms if you want my help. You can keep my fee."

As I said, I liked her.

"If my mate is pregnant, then I shall tend her however she wishes. The child will come to no harm. By _anyone_. She honors me by wanting to raise him in my home and under my protection. If you suggest ever again that I would kill him, or eat him, or allow him to be raised by strangers, I'll murder your whole family. Starting with Ethan and Elias."

She blinked at the name of her grandsons. Her lips pressed into a thin, steely line. She knew better than to ask how I knew of them. I was king. I fucking knew everything.

The sound of a black ballet shoe tapping impatiently brought us out of our glaring contest and redirected our eyes to Sookie, now fully clothed, standing by the sofa and looking none too pleased.

"Are y'all finished talking about me like I'm in a coma?"

The doctor rose from her seat, readjusting her bag's strap on her shoulder. Neither of us bothered to look chastened.

"Great," Sookie said, as if we'd gushed apologies. "So? What's the deal, doc?"

"When was your last period?" Ludwig asked.

"Almost four weeks ago."

"You're due any day?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Then if you are pregnant, it would only have begun two weeks ago. Home pregnancy tests can be sketchy at that time, because the hormones that trigger a positive are still weak. But since yours are completely blank, I'll conduct my own tests of your urine and blood. However..." she drew a steadying breath, looking between the two of us. "Something is up. I can tell you're different, Miss Stackhouse. Don't bother denying it, as the tests will mostly likely prove you're not as human as you appear. Even so, your stomach wall has thickened since I last examined you last year. You flinched slightly when I probed your breasts. I can detect a faint acceleration in your pulse, indicating more blood volume than usual. If I were examining a normal human, I would inform her that I believe her to be three months along."

"Shut the fuck up." Sookie gasped and smacked a hand over her elder-sassing mouth.

I rose from my chair. "Impossible."

"_Merely_ possible," Ludwig corrected as she swept towards the door. "It is an initial diagnosis. I'll call to confirm once I've tested her blood. And Northman," she turned and shot me another withering glance. "I have your word. The girl and her child are safe with you." She tilted her head, thinking. "And I'll take my two thousand bucks. As payment for putting my grandbabies' names in your filthy mouth."

With a dignity that belied five feet of height, she marched out.

Sookie watched her go, her hand still over her lips. She wasn't even breathing, she was so shocked.

"Humans need air, Sookie," I reminded softly.

It left her in a gush and she rounded on me with huge eyes. "Like hell, I do. What this human needs is a double scotch neat."

I wagged a finger. "Not until you're done breastfeeding."

"Fuck you," she uttered in exasperation. She threw herself down on the sofa in a huff, her dress swirling around with her movements. "This is so stupid. First it's so hard to tell I'm pregnant and probably aren't in the first place because my man is a vampire, and now I'm three months along? Did we have sex so hard that we time traveled? Ugh!" She smacked her forehead and fell back against the cushions.

I watched her closely. "Was there someone else, Sookie? A human? Three months ago?"

She shot right back up, her mouth hanging open. "How _dare_ you?! _There was Bill!_ And that was it!"

I carefull arranged my honest curiosity and sent it to her mind like a bouquet of flowers. "You owe me no explanations for your life before me. I merely ask. Couples often fight. Some break up. Some revenge fuck. It's normal. You never have to hide your past from me."

With that, she launched herself across the room, took a broad stance in front of my desk and pointed her dainty finger in my face. "Double fuck you," she repeated, eyes blazing. "I know I don't answer to you. I know what I owe and what I don't. If there any _been_ _anyone_ else...if this could have been explained _any other_ way...I would have told you. You _KNOW_ that!"

She turned on her heel and stomped to the other side of the room, as far away as she could get from me.

Before I could offer anything, she spun again, her finger still jabbing the air. "Oh! And you're buying her grandbabies shares in Disneyland. Threatening to kill them? Are you _serious_? I'd skin you alive if it didn't grow back so damn fast!"

She spun again, arms folded, huffing in rage.

Slowly, I rose from my desk and advanced towards her.

"No!" she snipped over her shoulder. "Don't come over here. I'm mad at you."

"I know," I replied, taking very slow steps. "My beautiful fairy is even more glorious when she's pissed off and demanding."

She snorted in digust and made a break for the door. In a blur, I was blocking it, towering over my little ball of angry glitter. "You're an angel," I grinned at her.

She punched into my stomach. "And dirt bikes. You're buying them dirt bikes."

"Kiss me and they'll have a fleet of them."

"That diamond choker you gave me a picture of? You're buying one for every resident at the Shady Pines Retirement Home."

"The men as well?"

"Two for the men!"

"Done."

"UGH!" she shouted, smiling through her frown. Her arms went around me and I was bear hugged. "I_ HATE_ you!"

I hugged her back, revelling in the soft material of her lovely dress. "Angel," I accused again.

She went still in my arms, our bond churning from fire to silk. I kissed the top of her head and spoke a hated possibility.

"Could it be that Bill is resonsible if you're with child?"

She went stiff against me and the silk between us turned to barbed wire. "Absolutely not."

"How can you be certain?"

"Cuz I am, dammit. If I'm pregnant, it's yours. Claudine said so. I say so. I had my periods regularly with him, plus I never Chose him. It's not possible."

Her points were valid, but I enjoyed her emphatic denial more. Fairies were such stubborn creatures, I truly believed, more than her observations, that if Sookie wanted my child and no other vampire's, then her body would bend to her will.

I smiled against her crown. "I believe you."

We stood for some moments, silently, enjoying the feel of eath other's arms, when my phone buzzed in my pocket.

Sookie stepped away to allow me to answer it. "Hurry," she said. "Dawn's in less than an hour. We need to get home. Or somewhere safe, if you want sunny time."

Herveaux's name blinked on the screen as I answered. "What?"

"Majesty," he quipped, as if he were saying "asshole."

"I'm in my PJs, wolf. Is this important?"

"I'm out the back of your bar. Before I take Hadley home for the day, might I beg an audience? Highness?" His deep Southern twang bit into each polished word and rusted them straight through with sarcasm.

"Two minutes." I ended the call and looked at Sookie. "Herveaux's outside. He wants to talk."

"Now?" she asked as she gathered our things. "Cuttin' it close, ain't he? Can't he just take Had home and talk to you at dusk tomorrow?"

"I'll be fast."

She smiled. "Tell him she's waiting for him at the bar. And that it's rude to keep a vampire up past his bedtime."

"Yes, lover."

I headed down the hall towards the emergency exit. The wolf had been in my employ as Hadley's guard for just under a week now. He's bitched and moaned at first, claiming he wasn't a damned babysitter and he already had a grownup job where people depended on him. Negotiations always bored me. I told him to name his price.

"A hunnert grand a month," he threw out, knowing full well I never paid a dime more than was called for.

"Fine," I replied.

His eyes had rounded. "What?"

"One hundred thousand dollars every thirty days. In that time, you'll guard the girl with your life, take her where she wants to go, install security in the new home I bought her, and escort her to and from work here at Fangtasia, all of this you'll do until further notice and give me a report every three days on all activity. You have yourself a deal."

"You can't be fuckin' serious."

"Because I'm such a fucking kidder."

"One point two million bucks a year? For following a little girl around while she grocery shops and vacuums?"

I'd flicked my hand. "If she asks, you may fuck her as well. Provided it doesn't distract you. My claim to her and her child is for Sookie only. Now that the Authority have warded her to me, their interest in what I do with her has died. I will employ her and house her. That is all."

"Shut your damn mouth," he'd growled. "You ain't her goddamn pimp. And making her work as a fanger waitress all her life ain't exactly living the dream. She should be allowed to work wherever she wants."

Despite my scowl, I was pleased. I knew Sookie would approve of a guard who told me to go to hell for pimping her cousin and demanding she be permitted to make her own choices. I tossed my hands up in indifference. "She works here because she's an ex-pet, ex-addict, high school dropout with no marketable skills who needs to be protected by someone with more clout than a McManager."

"You're a big fish, Northman, but you ain't the only one in the sea. She could work for me at the construction company. Office assistant or something. My pack would keep a close eye on her."

True. Nor would they eat her, as was possible with some of my less respectful clientele. She was no Sookie, but she still smelled and looked better than 90% of what walked through my club.

I made another impatient gesture. "Ask her then. If she prefers filing to mixing, then she's free to work for you." I watched the wheels turn in his head before adding, "I suggest you keep an open mind about the fucking. Sookie believes you two would be good for each other."

More choice profanity was tossed at me before he left.

Now, as I opened the back door, I found the burly were leaning against his truck, taking the air through his keen nose.

"What?"

"Evenin', sire," he said casually. He reached through his open windown and retrieved some papers from the seat. "Updates. Her house has been reinforced to the nines. I brought in a friend, best in the business, who installed the latest in home surveillance and protection. Military grade. And this," he held up another sheet, "is her movement sheet. Every place she's been in the last three days." He held them out to me.

"Is your email broken, Herveaux?" I took the paper, eyeing the dark sky with feigned nervousness. The sun was coming soon. Oh-fucking-no.

He eyed it with me. When he spoke, he spoke to the waning stars. "I think we may have a problem. Thought I'd share it in person."

He brought his gaze back to me, leaning in slightly, lowering his voice. "The last thirty-six hours, we've had a tail."

_Fuck_. "Description."

"Woman. Pretty. _Beautiful_. Mid-thirties. Walks behind us in public. Never seen her in a car, though. She keeps some serious distance. I wouldn't a noticed her normally, but she smells like a million Sookies. Sweeter than cotton candy. Somethin' else too. I can't place it, but it gave me the mother of all hard-ons, which was a bitch to hide from Hadley when we were runnin' chores."

_Fairy. Obviously_. "Does she know you've spotted her?"

He shrugged. "Don't know. I smell her more than I see her. What do you want me to do about her?"

_Kill her_. "Watch her."

"Do you know who she is? Would I be able to stop her if she tries anything?"

_No_. "Unknown."

He blew out a slow breath. "Great." After a moment, "I don't get the feeling she's hostile, but tails don't usually follow you if all's they plan to do is hand you a muffin basket. If you know what I'm up against, then you need to tell me. Hadley starts her supervised visits with Hunter this week, and then I'll have two lambs to protect instead of one. Do I have your permission to circle my pack around their meeting place? Just in case there's trouble?"

I was starting to like Herveaux with the same distant admiration I had for the doctor. "Yes. Any time Hadley and Hunter are together, you bring whatever backup you trust. I may know this woman, maybe not, and if so, she might be one of the people responsible for Sookie's absence these last few months."

A low growl erupted from the other man. "She won't have arms if she tries that shit with Hadley. What the fuck does she want with Stackhouses anyway?"

_A family reunion_. "Unknown."

"Goddammit," he cursed and kicked at glass kernels under his boot. "You got anyone watching Jason?"

"No."

"Why the hell not?"

"Does Jason smell like cotton candy and fuckability to you?"

"He smells like fucking all right, but nothing I would ever want a piece of."

"Exactly. I think we can assume that Stackhouse women drive supes crazy with sweetness, a sweetness that skipped Jason entirely. I'm fairly certain this woman and her people have no interest in him."

"You might wanna ask Sookie," he replied. "She'll be heartbroken if her only brother goes missing. Or worse."

Another truth. How many damn weres would I end up with on my payroll? "I'll ask."

"Good," he glanced up at the sky once again with a smug appraisal meant to put me in my nocturnal place. "Might wanna turn in for the day."

"Indeed. Hadley is waiting for you at the bar."

He nodded and followed me in. He found his blonde temptress sitting on a high stool. She greeted him shyly, her little yellow dress flirting around her knees as she tried to smooth it out, a canary surrounded by crows. She'd already made me a ridiculous amount of money from vampire patrons who loved to imagine that she looked _and_ tasted as innocent as a Shirley Temple. She and the wolf avoided each other's eyes and made it painfully clear that they'd be riding each other stupid inside of a week. Predictable mortals.

I found my own blonde temptress where I'd left her in my office.

She shrieked playfully when I snatched her up and exploded out the door and into the lightening sky. She was right. I needed some sunny time while I brought her up to speed.


	38. Chapter 38

**A/N: Okay, so closer to two weeks to update, but hey! That's progress! Sookie's POV. **

While Eric and Alcide were outside talkin' man business, I entertained myself by torturing Hadley via text messages. The last week had made me cautiously optimistic. The Authority, as far as I could tell, had really forgotten all about her once Eric agreed to take her on as part of his "royal" retinue. I hoped the former queen's peculiar interest in her had been chalked up to a stupid woman's stupid fancy, and that was it. No one had suggested Hadley was special outside of her pet status. And mercifully, Hunter seemed to go unnoticed altogether. Hadley had not had custody of him the entire time she'd been a pet, and she'd had the two brain cells needed to keep her mouth shut about him, so our fears about vampires uncovering their (our) yumminess was slowly beginning to fade.

But someone else's interest in her made me smile like a fool.

I heard his mental, growly appraisal of her every time they were together, just like I heard her fluttering, insecure admiration of his kindness/handsomeness/unfairly distracting ass. According to Hadley's brain, she'd never seen a man boss a pair of jeans around like Alcide could. (I disagreed, but to each her hunky own.)

And right now, she was front of house, sayin' her goodnights to other staff and nervously waiting for said hunky guard to pick her up and take her home, as he had every night for the past week. She'd given some very weak objections to the hiring of a guard to follow her around everywhere. She honestly felt, even with the dangers posed to Hunter, that she just wasn't worth the hassle. I hadn't told her about the other werewolf (whom I hadn't met) that was distantly following Hunter. Alcide swore by her, and I _did_ feel better knowing the little boy had protection. I'd kept it to myself because I didn't want to worry Hadley. She'd been through a lot, and she hadn't had Gran or anyone else to help her through it. Finally, she was trying to put herself right, and I wasn't about to turn my back or add to her troubles by pointing out everything that could go horribly wrong.

Instead, I chose to tease her. Alcide was the perfect vehicle.

And right now, she was feeling especially twitterpated as she kept checking her watch and wondering silently if she reeked of booze instead of the nice perfume she wore, knowing weres were big scenters and hoping he liked her choice. I couldn't resist. I took out my phone.

_He's here. Have you started wearing your sexy underpants yet? -S_

I sent it. Four second later, Hadley swore at me through the wall. "Shut up!" Then wrote back.

_Shut up! He's a nice guy, that's all. Keep your nose on your face and outta my biznuz. -H_

_Your sex biznuz. -S_

_You're lucky I love Eric so much. Otherwise I'd smacka bitch. -H_

_Get your love off my man. Smooch the wolf instead. -S_

_Forget it. Ima smack you good. Get out here and take it like a man. -H_

_Save it for Alcide's ass. You stare at it so hard that you can prolly read his credit cards. -S_

_You suck. -H_

_He hopes you do. -S_

There was a thirty second pause and I couldn't help but giggle.

_Does he really? -H_

_Suddenly you're so interested. -S_

_So does he? -H_

_He tries not to, but yeah. He alternates between wanting to wrap you up in fluffy blankets and hot cocoa to wanting to...ya know. -S_

There was another, slightly longer pause.

_He doesn't act like it. -H_

_Jeez, Had. Because he's not an asshole. -S_

I snuck a peek into her head and saw genuine surprise at his interest. I supposed it made sense. Hadley had never gone for nice guys before. She'd always leaned towards men who hid their own insecurity by being selfish, running around on her, then running off entirely when things got too serious. And there was the queen. Hadley thought Sophie Anne had been good to her, but by that, she thought that any lover who didn't beat on her or get her pregnant was a sweetheart. Who knows? Maybe the vampire had been good to her, like Eric was to me. I could call her a bitch and every other name under the sun, but again, I'd called Eric those same names not two months ago.

I guess everyone's relative.

I tried to be understanding. That, and a little bit pushy, gently prodding her towards a man I _knew_ to be good. I was already excited for him to meet Hunter. I'd only met the little guy once, but he was cute a bug's ear and I knew Alcide well enough to know he wouldn't just throw himself on a grenade to save him, he'd also play with him. Talk to him. Let Hunter read his mind and reinforce that being different was no big deal. It made me happy, knowing Hunter would have a positive supernatural role model. A strong, successful, kind man who happened to be a monster, according to western myth. Hunter needed to see that lie exposed.

I already had visions of them as a family. Hunter, scared of the boogyman under his bed, would run to his parents' room and into the arms of a werewolf for comfort. It was so cute, I almost needed a tissue.

Suddenly Eric's side of our bond pinged and my ears perked, knowing he was coming for me and moving fast.

I popped my phone into my pocket and gripped my purse.

A tornado whipped into the office and I could only shriek with laughter when it caught me and blew out two sets of doors and into the predawn sky.

"Bad man!" I shouted over the whip. "What about the car?"

"Forget it!" he shouted back. "I want my sunrise!"

Naturally. Eric was getting as bad as I was about his sun addiction. It was so unfair to think that he'd never have to worry about skin cancer.

I drew a breath when I remembered that I wouldn't have to either from now on. At least, I didn't think so. It seemed unlikely that my Fae immortality could be trumped by cancer. Or heart disease. Or any kind of illness. I had never been sick a day in my life, really. Not even a sniffle or a single chicken pock, and that was before my Choosing Eric had frozen me in the state I was in now. Trauma was still an issue, but medically speaking? I was pretty sure I could lie in the sun for fifteen hours straight and only suffer a darker tan.

Eric was moving fast.

In midair, the sun exploded in the east, raining bright light over my right shoulder, which told me we were heading north, far out of town.

I peeked up and looked at him. Eyes slanted against the headwind, he was trained on his course, too intent to notice.

I reached up and took his chin between my fingers, tugging his face to meet the sun. Golden light spilled over his face, into his hair, filled his bright blue eyes and made them sparkle. I had always thought that Eric was a stunningly handsome man, but the darkness had never done him justice. In the night, he had the faint glow of a very pretty opal. In the day, he glittered like a diamond.

His gaze warmed as he acknowledged the sun and he slowed down to enjoy the view as it hovered on the horizon. When he looked down at me, his brow creased.

"You're looking at me strangely," he said.

"Am I?" I gently traced his outer eye.

He paused and readjusted, hiking my legs more firmly around his waist. "Yes. What are you thinking about?"

I glanced at the sun, then back to him. "Nothing you don't hear a thousand times a day. You're a heartbreaker. Beautiful as the day is long."

Aside from his eyes widening slightly, he didn't react. He never did, it seemed. I sighed and looked back at the sunrise. It was the first we'd shared while hovering. Snuggling closer to him, I wasn't bothered in the least that he stayed quiet. That was his way. I'd learned over the past few weeks that my compliments turned him very serious, almost like he didn't quite believe me and was waiting for a caveat or for the bond to tell him that I was merely being polite.

There was no caveat. And I sure as hell wasn't being nice. I was being honest. It was so odd that he questioned my sincerity when every human he'd ever met had told him the same. He was so perfect, it hurt to look at him.

"There are other beautiful vampires," he said finally. "Of all descriptions."

I shrugged against his cheek. "Good for them."

"Do you believe...if you'd never met me...that perhaps you would have Chosen another?"

I looked at him, puzzled. "No," I answered. "After being with Bill, if I'd never known you, I doubt I would have ever went looking for another vampire."

"You can't hear us. Surely that's a good reason to consider another mate from our kind."

My frown deepened. "Maybe. Where's this coming from?"

I couldn't feel much of anything in our bond. No jealousy or insecurity. Just... a kind of distant curiosity.

When he spoke, he was looking towards the sun with yearning etched in his face. "Nowhere. Just a hypothetical."

I nibbled my lip, determined to tease him as much as I had Hadley. "There are other fairies, too. Purer than me and ten times prettier. If one of them had come to your bar instead of me, would you have bonded to her?"

His neck snapped his head back to me so sharply that I feared it might have broken. "Never."

"For a vampire, the expression 'Never say never' couldn't be more true."

"I said never. No woman is the world can match you."

"Pashaw," I laughed lightly. "I can think of three in Bon Temps alone."

Baring his teeth, he shook me. My laughter broke. His arms were around my back and he jostled me just hard enough to make me stop. "These women, do they have your _eyes_?" he asked sternly. "Do they have your fearlessness? Your loyalty? Would they come to my bar and ignore me? Would they have spurned me until I learned how to win them fairly? Or could I simply glamour them into baring their necks and their bodies to me? Could they _possibly_ make me love them? Make me want them until I couldn't think of anything else?"

He all but spat over his shoulder and I watched him with wide, incredulous eyes.

"No," he answered himself, snaking his arms tighter, holding me by the nape. "There are not three in Bon Temps. There are not three on this continent. There isn't a single creature in existence. It's you. And only you. More astonishing and beautiful than the sum of your parts. Nothing less could have captured me, Sookie. Nothing."

I tried not to go all mushy. I also tried not to get mad. "And you think you're any different for me? That you're just a pretty face and a quiet mind?" I tsked him, shaking my head slowly. "I'm not going to spend the whole day listing all the things I love about you. But believe me, they range from your courage to your clothes to the shape of your damn fingernails. Every tiny little thing. I couldn't have picked a better man for myself if I'd been given the power to build him from scratch. You're even better than that, because you're not just exactly what I want, you're exacty what I _need_."

I waited a tick before I shook him back. "Okay?"

"Your words. They astound me," he said.

I laughed again. Harder and with more happiness than before. "Lord knows why. Like I said, you must hear them all the time."

"Not like yours."

I shook my head again, smiling, but not really understanding. I was happy that my praise meant so much to him, but I was no poet.

The sun was completely out now, dazzling us with its brilliant light.

"Good morning, Eric," I whispered to him.

"Good morning, Sookie."

"So where are you taking me?"

At that, he began moving again. "I have a gift for you."

I flicked his ear. "What did I say about giving me stuff?"

He actually_ bit_ my ear in retaliation. "I believe you said you were a material girl and that if I didn't shower you with furs and sports cars and tiaras, you'd leave me."

"Verbatim. But you could deliver all of that stuff to the house. Where are we going?"

He cracked a grin. "Not the house."

E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S

In fact, it was a lake. Caddo Lake, to be exact. I'd never been there, even though is was only about fifteen miles out of Shreveport. People had always told me it was beautiful. A national park, full of wetlands that looked positively primordial. Cypress trees and Spanish moss and low, lazy water that hadn't circulated in months. It teemed with scaly, leathery animals, fit for gliding and swimming and slithering. Beautiful, but as an ecosystem, it was distictly unwelcome to humans with their lack of fins and clumsy limbs. Because of that and its park status, buildup around the shore was minimal.

But Eric, as always, had seen an opportunity.

As we drew closer to the swamp forests and further away from civilization, I could just make out a roof poking out between the branches of a particularly dense cluster of trees.

"There," he said, and honed towards it.

"What is it?"

"Your gift."

We drew closer, lower, until I finally could see its entirety. It was a beautiful stilt house, standing in clear defiance of its sludge foundation. There were no roads, no fancy landing strip. This house had been built for boat access only, with the clear intent to get away from the whole world. I gave a startled exhalation as we landed on a deck of very expensive heart wood.

"Who lives here?" I asked, looking through glass walls, which seemed to wrap around the entire exterior.

"Us," he anwered. "When we feel like it."

"'scuse me?"

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring with exactly two keys on it. "My home in Shreveport is known by others. Our royal residence is not yet complete. I discovered this while looking for a safe house several years ago and glamoured the owner into selling it to me. It was mine. Now it's yours."

"Eric! You stole it!" I slapped his head.

"I paid him handsomely for it, then planted the suggestion that he was tired of the mosquitoes."

"Thief thief! Lord, I can't believe you sometimes." I looked at the keys dangling from his fingers and cursed under my breath as he noted my excitement under my lecture. I made a sheepish noise and walked up to press my face against the glass, looking into a gorgeous living room, complete with a huge fireplace, leather sofas, woven rugs, even a stuffed moose head on the wall. It was very rustic chic.

"So who was he? The owner."

"A horror writer. He came here to sequester himself when working. The sound of the aligators frightened him. He wrote his best novels when scared himself."

"Anybody I'd know?"

He gave me an infuriating look, like he knew but wasn't telling. "I imagine so. The New York Times Bestseller List is always up his ass looking for its next number one."

I crinkled my nose, looking at the fancy slate tiles in the open kitchen. "He didn't unload these ass gems in this house, did he? I don't want to find writer plops on my nice, new floor."

"All ass plops have been removed and sent to his publisher, I assure you."

I turned from the house and leaned into his arms, giggling.

"Does it please you?" he asked, smirking.

"It's lovely. Not exactly Fort Knox, but I love it."

"Its strength is in its isolation. And its windows. A vampire would never rest in such a sunny, vulnerable place. Its the last place anyone would look for me."

I cocked my head. "Why the heck did you buy it before? You would have cooked in there!"

"The bedroom is light proof. And I've never used this place before now. It was merely an option."

I reached out and took the key from his hand. "I should make you give it back to the writer," I slid the key into the sliding door's lock. "He obviously put a lot of work into this house."

I slid the door open and was greeted with the smell of cedar. I inhaled deeply, smiling despite myself. Sunlight poured over every surface as I walked straight to the kitchen and opened a container on the counter marked 'Coffee'. It was filled to the brim. I arched my brow at him.

He shrugged as he shouldered his way in and slid the door closed behind him, locking it immediately. "I might have had Pam stock it with food."

I filled the coffee maker, grinning at him. "You're awful. Stealing. Delegating."

"I _paid_ the man well and it took Pam an hour to stock. She's been tasked with worse."

Coffee maker simmering, I wandered into the living room, where Eric was already starting to make a fire in the harth. As I settled into camel back sofa, I watched his wide shoulders as they sawed back and forth with his chore.

"Thank you," I said. "I won't accept it as mine, but I love that you've brought me here. I feel like we're a million miles from anyone."

Arranging the wood into a tidy pyramid, Eric struck a match on his boot and threw it at the base. The flame hesitated, dimmed, then began to grow.

"It's yours if I have to glue the keys in your hand. And we have matters to discuss."

I settled back. This sounded like I needed to get comfortable. "What'd Alcide say?"

A burst of speed and suddenly Eric was sprawled on the couch with me, his head in my lap. "He has a hard-on for your cousin. And someone has been following them for the last few days."

"Shit. Does he know who it is?"

"No, but he described her. It sounds like Claudine is watching them. A fairy woman, at the very least."

"How does he know about fairies?" I asked.

"He doesn't. But she's beautiful and smells like an orgasm. He knows enough to know she's like you."

I looked down and saw my hand was already in his hair, absently combing back and forth. "What do you think she wants?"

He was quiet for a moment, his blue eyes going slowly blind with pleasure. "I'm not sure. I've given him permission to take whatever precautions he deems necessary."

I blew out a breath. "If it's Claudine, then I'm not too worried. I'm pretty sure she's not dangerous."

"Why are you sure?"

"I'm not 100%, but I doubt she'd reveal herself to me and treat me like an equal, only to turn around and stalk my cousin."

He settled deeper into my thighs. "Fair enough. But it may not even be Claudine. I'm preparing for the worst."

"I appreciate that."

We sat quietly for a moment. The fire built up slowly until it was crackling happily, cutting through the chill of the early dawn and warming the houses many hard surfaces. Through the invisible walls, we could see in every direction, the wetlands slowly coming to life with birds calls. I could feel myself growing drowsy. I really was turning into a vampire's companion. The sun made me think of turning in instead of getting up.

"Speaking of Claudine, we need to think about meeting Mab," I said, yawning.

"Yes," he said. He didn't elaborate.

My eyes were drooping. "Really should."

"Mm-hmm."

I could just make out his face in my lap. His eyes were closed. He was drifting away.

"Eric. We should... talk..."

"Yes."

I don't remember what happened next. We must have fallen asleep. All I know is that when I woke up, we were still in a forest, except it was golden and unworldly in beauty.

And I smelled cookies.

_Fuck._

In my lap, my vampire continued to rest. The Fae realm shimmered all around us. Suddenly a pop sounded. And another. And another. Until we were completely surrounded by fairies. They stood around us, looking down with quizzical glances and me and more fearful stares at Eric. The last pop signalled Mab's arrival. She stood directly in front of us, her cold eyes taking us in as we lay curled in our sleeping position.

Eric and I had been summoned at last.


	39. Chapter 39

**A/N: Awesome news! One of my other stories has been nominated for a Fangie! That's just plain excellent. Be sure to go to the Fangreaders forum to vote for your fave stories. I had a hard time choosing. As for mine, if you were a fan of "Five, As Agreed Upon", then vote for me in the Dr. Ludwig category! **

**As for the story, I want to reiterate that when I started writing this, we had NOT seen season four and thus Sookie's romp through evil fairy land didn't happen in my version. She was gone for several months, and I've included Mab as a character, but that's it. So there's no serious fighting going on between them. Yet. **

**Thanks all! Eric's POV.**

I was floating very comfortably in the vampire ether. Sookie's warm thighs and very touchable dress lay under my cheek. With each inhalation, I steadily gorged on her scent, perfectly happy to fall into my rest, even though our mouths were spouting some nonsense about needing to spoil the moment with talking.

I'd brought her to the house that I'd already placed in her name. She gave me the standard refusal boilerplate. I ignored it. The keys were already on her chain in her purse. And despite how much work I actually needed to do (Mississippi's Areas Two and Four needed new sheriffs and the AVL were hosting several vampire-friendly festivals next month that I needed to oversee), I couldn't manage to conjure up a fuck to give about it. I'd become king out of necessity. I wasn't married to my job. I was married to Sookie. She had a ball of sunlight encasing my heart that proved it.

So I snuggled with my wife on this ridiculously plush sofa and fell asleep. Leave a message with my fucking secretary.

I heard birds. I felt the sun strengthen through the windows. I smelled the swamp around us.

And then, gradually, I didn't.

When I heard voices, it took several minutes to pull myself out of my self-induced stupor. They were quiet at first. Mutterings. Hushed. Then, they began to increase. In speed. In volume. Until Sookie's voice, clear as a bell, broke through the fog.

"Lady, you got some nerve. I said take us back! I'm not having this conversation here, goddammit. Not when ten years will pass in the meantime. If Claudine can pop her ass on and off my property to chat, then so can you."

"How _dare_ you?" an imperious female voice ansered in return. "You presume to order me about? I am queen of this realm and you _will_ show me the proper respect, Half Child."

"I'm going to ignore that last part and just reiterate that you have NO right to take us out of our home. I wanna talk with you, but not here! _TAKE US HOME_!"

"What is there to discuss? You've ruined your Choice! A vampire?! You have no idea what you've done! There are many from our kind that would have been happy to wed you."

"Claudine said you were okay with it! My dream TOLD me you were okay with it! My Choice is supposed to trump any bullshit objection you might have of him being a vampire! And this is all beside the point because I'm not asking permission. Eric is mine! I want to know about the tome and Claudine's claim that I'm having a Scion, but I ain't gonna say it again. Put us back in our world right now. This isn't worth ruining your pretty princess costume over."

With that, I opened my eyes. Our house around us was gone. Golden light fell all around us in suspicious fairytale spledor. I drew air threw my nose. I gasped. I felt my pupils dilate. There was no swamp in this smell. No cedar furniture. No earth as I had ever experienced it.

Sookie had told me that her people's world was the vampire equivalent of Willy Wonka's crack house and that I'd go "balls-out, foaming crazy" if I ever breached their border. She warned me that the place smelled like her happiest memory.

Taking another inhalation, her prediction about my craziness was entirely possible.

This world didn't smell like cookies to me. I had no interest in sugar and cinnamon. This world smelled like Sookie. The leaves on the trees above smelled like her laughter. The grass beneath my face smelled like the first time we made love. The wind itself smelled like when she wrapped her arms around me and whispered that she loved me. And now she stood before me in all of her glory, balling out an ancient monarch (again), pointing her finger in the woman's face and completely oblivious to my wakefulness.

I blinked in shock. I blocked my nose. This was going to require all of my faculties and I couldn't afford to get high.

Sookie and Mab stood toe to toe, Sookie looking fit to punch the woman right in the nose. The queen herself was stately enough, though Sookie was right about her dress. It looked like an eight year old's birthday cake, complete with body glitter, which looked rather desperate on a fifty year old. But it wasn't the fabled queen or my mate's argument with her that highjacked my eyes and wouldn't release them.

As Sookie gesticulated wildly, her lovely dress swishing with her movements, her lower belly throbbed with the brightening and dimming of a beautiful white light. It shone through her clothes, and through her skin beneath them, and her muscles beneath that. She was lit from the inside out.

It was stunning.

Claudine had seen it that morning on my lawn. Now in their realm, I could see it too.

Sookie was pregnant with Light.

And it was mine.

My instinct overrode my caution and I inhaled deeply, looking for the scent of my child. My fangs clicked as the scent of Sookie's eye color and sock preferences filled my lungs. The sound was loud enough to startle the women into silence. Suddenly I had everyone's attention as I growled softly at my mate, never sparing a glance towards anyone else, whom I'm sure, under other circumstances, wouldn't have even seen me before I ripped their Fae heads off and sucked from their gushing throats like a public drinking fountain.

Still. They backed away fearfully, this semicircle of fairies, terrified of me. At least, I assumed they were. I wasn't paying attention.

"Ssssssookie," I purred to her.

She smiled at me, her eyes filling with relief. "Hey, you. Would you please tell her majesty to get her ass in gear? Pam and Jason and everyone will freak out of we're gone for more than a day."

I didn't hear her request. I reared up onto my knees and snatched her, ramming my head into her belly.

She let out a squeak and pushed at me, scandalized at my public affection in front of so many staring eyes. She wasn't looking down. She didn't see it. She'd been so preoccupied sassing that it never even occurred to her to check.

"Look," I said, pressing a hand between her hip bones. "It's true. You carry my child."

Something hot and greedy broke inside of me. _Sookie was the mother of my child_. Through some miracle of motley genetics, a vampire and a human-fairy hybrid had managed to conceive.

As I finally threw a glance around the others, I saw they too had Lights. As Claudine had explained, each fairy held a Light within their chest with the slightest hint of color. Pinks, oranges, blues, grays, all throbbing steadily through their clothes, where their hearts beat. None, however had one in their womb, as Sookie did, just as she didn't wield a Light in her heart.

I looked down at my own chest.

Sure enough.

My own chest was ablaze with Sookie's buried Light, shining as brightly as a flashlight through a sheet. It was as golden as my lover's skin and hair, the perfect hue for her sunny personality. I puffed up a bit, relishing its beauty. It was far more lovely than the other fairies' Lights, just as the pure white Light in her belly was the most beautiful of all.

This wasn't just my opinion.

Other fairies were suddenly taking notice. Their brows crinkled. They whispered at each other behind their hands. Only Claudine, hidden among their ranks, seemed to understand the significance of Sookie's lack of a heart Light and possession of a womb Light.

I inhaled again and buried myself against her. I was losing my fight to stay rational.

Sun. Beauty. Happiness. I... couldn't... remember what we...

My eyes rolled back. Fuck it. My hands dove under the hem of her dress, gripping her ass and shoving her stomach harder into my face. She squealed my name and shoved at my head.

"Sookie," I drew out again. "Ripe Sookie."

She gave up pushing at me. "Shit," she muttered. "You're no help."

Mab's smugness radiated like heat. "What did you expect? He's an animal. Animals like to gnaw on their bones."

There were murmurs of agreement. Judgmental twits in tutus and hotpants...

Sookie stood straighter in my arms, defiant. "I'll thank y'all to shut the hell up about my Chosen. He can't drink your blood anymore, but he can still decapitate people just fine."

"Shall I kill them for you?" I asked into her dress. I wasn't completely sure whom she meant, but if she wanted someone dead, she only need ask. She shushed me, running her fingers through my hair, driving me further into my euphoric stupor. Her Light was stronger in this place. Electricity skittered out of her fingers with every pass over my scalp. I moaned softly.

"Mab," she pleaded, putting her hand on her stomach next to my face. "I can see it, too. Please," she stumbled. I could smell her tears. I hissed with dislike, several fairies gasping at the noise. "Please," she repeated. "I don't want to lose any more time."

There was silence. Sookie continued to pet me as I rubbed myself against her belly, marking my territory. I felt no unease about our being kidnapped, outnumbered, and held hostage. I knew I should have, but I couldn't penetrate my own bliss. I sensed Mab was making a decision. If she didn't comply with Sookie's request, I would kill her. And her second in command, if they refused. And her third. Until a fairy with some fucking brains inherited her post. In the meantime... I took another deep drag through her dress. And another.

Yes.

I could smell it now.

It was unlike any pregnancy I'd ever encountered, but there was a faint, perfect scent of genesis. Like Sookie, my child smelled like happiness. Unlike her signature of honey and pure sunshine, my child held notes of snow and wildflowers. I knew this smell. I let out a very excited purr as I drew again in disbelief. Incredible. Ancient Dalsland flashed in my mind. Springtime. The chill of early morning and how it drew goosebumps on my human skin as I rose for the morning. The break of dawn. Tiny, tremulous purple flowers peeking out of the frigid, inhospitable earth.

"Förgätmigej." My tiny child smelled like Water Forget-Me-Nots.

Sookie sighed above me. It was just another strange word from my past. Her arms circled my head and she hugged me.

"Don't make me sic 'im on you," she said quietly to our hostess.

Another moment passed, then finally the queen made a noise of impatience. "Fine. If you insist on wasting time, then we shall do it in your world."

Sookie let out a loud, relieved breath. "Finally."

"You will guarantee my safety and keep your dog on his leash, yes?" She haughty tone made my fangs itch. I opened my mouth and massaged them against Sookie's dress, soothing their bloodlust.

Sookie huffed. "You'll pay him the respect he's owed as a king and a gentleman, or I'll order him to rip your wings off, Highness." Had I been myself, I would have laughed at her double contradiction in terms. Instead, I merely growled in agreement (proving the queen may have had a point).

"Claudine, you will join us," Mab said.

"Yes, Majesty." The fairy moved from the circle to join us in the center.

I pulled myself out of Sookie to watch as Mab lifted her hands and made a silence entreaty to the world around us. Immediately, the air shifted and a vortex of light opened beside us. The queen gestured to it. "Enter."

Sookie nudged me to my feet, then took my hand and all but dragged me to the interdimensional door. "Pam's gonna kill me," she said under her breath.

As I followed her, I felt a surprising sadness to be leaving so soon. We'd only just arrived, and yet Sookie was adamant that every moment spent here equalled a day or more. Had I eventually gained my senses, I would have liked to explore this world. Ask questions about its allure. Make love to Sookie in it. Watch her belly for hours, memorizing the ebb and flow of the Light I had put there, never even needing to blink.

The fairy women followed on my heel.

As we entered another forest, it was late into the night. My nose was loathe to inform me that we had entered northern Louisiana and that the magical essence in the air had vanished. The four of us had just barely come through the bright porthole before it quickly zipped shut behind us. Clearly, it didn't risk the possibility of trespassers. As I pulled another lungful of air, my headiness instantly began to retreat. Slowly, I turned heel and met the gaze of the Great Fae Queen for the first time.

It was still hard to believe this particular fairytale was true. As I took in her cold, blue eyes, thin body and translucent skin, I was transported back seven hundred years ago to when I'd first heard her name. Godric said that it was important to assume all tales were true, until proven otherwise. With this woman, the proof was in the glitter.

"Your Majesty," I proffered, bowing slightly.

She lowered her lids fractionally. "Regional king," she returned rather bitchily.

"Forgive my trance. My woman struck me insensible."

She cast her eye around our world with an unimpressed eye. "You've asked me here, Half Child," she spoke to Sookie standing beside me. "I suggest you use the time wisely before we're forced to leave. His kind," she jutted her chin at me, "are everywhere."

Sookie nodded, rubbing her hands together anxiously. I mourned that the Light was gone, reburied under her flesh, invisible to this world. I reached down and stroked over her hands. "It was lovely," I murmured in her ear. "I cannot tell you how proud I am."

She gave me a watery, grateful look before leveling her eyes at the queen and her cousin. "Then cut to the chase. We saw the Light for ourselves. If I'm really pregnant, and it's really a Scion, then I need you to tell me so. Now."

Claudine's gaze had never left her. Not from the moment I'd awoken and spared her a glance. Her attention had been glued to Sookie. Now, she looked worriedly at her queen.

Mab, however, seemed unperturbed. "Yes," she said finally. "It is so."

Sookie's legs gave out. I barely caught her in time, and hauled her up against me. "Oh my God," she rasped. "I can't believe it."

"Nor I," replied the queen. "But you have the pure Light within you. A Half Child and a bloodsucker have somehow realized the Fae's oldest prophesy. You carry the Scion." Surprisingly, a ripple of fear entered her calm features. "The Coming has begun.'

Sookie shrunk into a tiny space in my side. "Oh, Jesus," she whimpered. "The Coming? What's coming? And why is it coming to us? You look so disgusted... are you sure I'm not just pregnant?" Her eyes grew hopeful at the thought. "Maybe I'm just pregnant with a quarter fairy baby! It's possible, right? I mean, Claudine's already said there's never been a couple like me and Eric. Maybe the Light in me is just our little fairy-human-vampire guy! That's probably exactly what-"

Mab raised her hand to cut her off. "No," she said impatiently. "The pure Light is unmistakable. I see it even now. And your relationship is in keeping with our Tome, which fortold of a bond unique in the world. And that your joining would create a Scion, the deed of equalibrium."

"Equalibrium of what?" I asked, cradling Sookie carefully. "What is our child to you?" It didn't matter. She couldn't have it. Whatever the Fae needed him for, they'd just have to take it up with the Department of Kiss My Lukewarm Ass. Ask for Pam.

She pursed her lips, silently debating how much to say.

"Answer me, Mab. My leash is straining."

"Do not threaten me."

"Don't be a stonewalling cunt. I get awfully bitey when it comes a lack of information about my firstborn."

A small flitter of happiness rose in Sookie. She liked my paternal side, apparently. She'd be sick of it soon enough, after I'd locked her in our new, hidden home and refused to let her or our baby see the outside world ever again.

Mab ignored my insult and my threat, drawing herself up to her full height. "The Tome does not explain the exact meaning of the Coming, however our people have believed for an age that the Scion, if arisen, would precipitate a shift in the supernatural world."

"For the Fae?"

She shook her head. "For all."

I blinked. "All? _All_ supernaturals? Fae, vampire, shifter, demon-"

"All," she interrupted me. "It is believed the Coming will trigger a mighty upheaval in the composition and relationships of these races."

"A truce?" Sookie queried.

I highly doubted it. "A war?" I asked.

Mab raised her shoulders fractionally. "It is not known."

"Not good enough." My phone pinged in my pocket. I ignored it.

"This isn't a barter, vampire. I've told you all I know. Be grateful I've given you that much." A branch snapped in the forest. All of our heads jerked in its direction. Claudine cast a fearful glance at me.

"Majesty, we must leave." Though looking my way, I wasn't sure which regent she addressed.

My phone pinged again. Another message. Again, I ignored it. "We aren't done, Fae queen. We must resolve this, whatever it is." I did my best to sound respectful. Sookie and I needed this woman, as much as I detested the idea. She was the only one in a position to help us, if there was any help to be had.

Sookie's hands were in my shirt, clenching and releasing like a kneading kitten. I put my hand in her hair, stroking it gently.

Mab turned to Claudine. "You will continue your vigil over your Godchild," she gestured to Sookie. "Stay alert. Tell Chloe the same."

"Chloe?" Sookie asked.

"Hadley's fairy Godmother," Claudine explained. "She's been watching over her for the last three years."

Ah. The woman Herveaux had spotted.

"Will other vampires be able to sense her pregnancy?" I asked, hugging her slightly tighter. "Do others know of this prophesy? Will they look for Sookie, now that it has materialized?"

"The Tome is ours, but the prophesy is not. The foretelling is ancient and its tellers are almost extinct. However, there are some. Not all are fairies, either. I do not know if other races have the means of knowing about Sookie. Or how they interpret the Coming. But the magic responsible for the Scion is supposed to be the most powerful ever known. Some may welcome it. Others..."

My body hardened. A natural response to planning the death of anyone who came asking about her. "I understand."

"No, you don't. No one does, not even I. The Coming may spell the death of all magical people, vampire. Or the death of all non-magical. Or a Utopia. Or Hell. You should protect Sookie at all costs. Or kill her now, before the atrocities strike us all down, one by one. There is_ nothing_ to understand." She lifted her hand slightly and summoned the votex again. It opened immediately, swirling with light.

Claudine stepped forward and kissed Sookie's cheek. When she stepped back, there were tears in her eyes that she tried to smile through. "Be brave," she whispered. "The Coming is a good thing. I've believed so since I was a little girl. Have faith, your child is born of love. The world will be better for him."

She backed away. Mab gestured impatiently to the door and Claudine gave us one more plaintive look before disappearing through it. For the first time since our introduction, Mab's featured softened slightly. "I want to agree with her," she confessed softly. "Were the stakes not so frightening, I would offer my peace to you. You are both unlikely, but I cannot argue with your bond." She paused. "Nor can I deny the significance of your child. Prepare youselves, Sookie Stackhouse and vampire king Northman. We are about to be tested." She turned towards the door. "All of us."

She entered the well of light. It ate her up and disappeared, leaving Sookie and I alone in the dark forest.

"Jesus, save us," she murmured, turning her face into me.

My phone pinged again. I took it out of my pocket and checked it. I had ninety-two missed calls, fifty-eight texts and seventy voicemails. Pam, Domingo, Herveaux, Hadley, the king of Missouri, the queen of Arkansas, even Sam Merlotte. Sookie peeked into my hand, catching her breath when she saw the date glowing softly in the upper lefthand of the screen.

We had been gone nine days.


	40. Chapter 40

**A/N: Sookie's POV**

I didn't have my phone. I'd put it in my purse back at the stilt house.

Eric paced between two trees, his phone jammed in his ear as he tried unsuccessfully to talk over Pam's yelling. She was in rare form, I could hear her even at ten feet away.

It was cold. Very cold. I was still only in my gauzy, beige dress that Eric had given me _a week and a half ago_. I crossed my arms, rubbing them on either side, my jaw tightening, my teeth starting to chatter.

I bounced on the balls of my feet as I waited impatiently for him to finish getting ear raped so I could use his cell to call Jason and Hadley. They must have assumed I was dead again. Alcide, too. Lord, with Eric and I inexplicably missing, he'd probably hot-glued himself to Hadley and Hunter, convinced something horrible had happened to us and was coming for them next.

Eric finally got an entire sentence in edgewise. "As your maker, I command you to shut the fuck up."

The other end went dead.

Satisfied, he quietly began explaining what had happened. Without breaking stride, he shouldered out of his leather jacket. Standing in his dark t-shirt, he walked over to me and without looking at me, draped the coat over my shoulders. It swamped me. His palm cupped my cheek, warming it instantly. It was so unfair that not only was he not vampirically cold, he was warm as toast despite the chill in the air. My stupid Radia obviously had a favorite person. It had never been so charitable to_ me_ when _I'd_ hauled its stowaway ass around for twenty-six winters. I always froze my tits off. But for Eric, it was suddenly a portable campfire. Little orby jerk.

I slid my arms through the half acre of sleeves, barely feeling the cuff at my fingertips.

Eric gave his abridged version of what happened to us, then told Pam we would get home immediately. Once he hung up, I lunged at him and grabbed the phone, stabbing Jason's number into the keys. Amused, Eric held his arms out wide, allowing the theft. I began my own frantic pacing as the phone rang three impossibly slow times.

" 'Llo?"

"Jason!"

"Sook! Jee-sus Ca-rist, tell me that's you! Where the fuck you been at? I thought you were dead in a haunted castle or some shit! People've been worried sick! Y'allright? Where are ya?!"

I blew out a huge breath. "Hey, no it's me. I'm all right, I swear. I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to leave without callin'. Nuthin's happened, I promise. Nuthin' bad, anyway. I just wanted to call and let you know I'm okay."

"They didn't have fuckin' phones where you went? I hear it's nice in 1842 this time a year."

I huffed. I wanted to defend myself, but he was right to be annoyed. I hadn't told him about Faery before. It had taken a lot of time to get him into a space where he accepted that I was okay without me going into much detail of where I'd been for all those months. Now I'd done it again. I wasn't allowed to get mad at the ignorance I forced him to live in. "I know, you're right. I'm a terrible sister and you've got a right to be pissed at me. When I get back to Bon Temps, I'll buy you a beer and explain everything."

"At the rate you're jerking me around, that beer better have gold leaf in it and be served between Jenna Jameson's ass cheeks."

Eric snorted.

I rolled my eyes.

"I'll call her agent. Meanwhile, try to remember you love me."

"Shit, you know I do. Call me tomorrow. I mean it, goddammit."

"I will. Call Hadley and tell her I'm okay? And I'll talk to her soon?"

"Sure. See ya."

I hung up and began dialing again.

"Who are you calling?" Eric asked.

I didn't look up. "Alcide's work. I think this is his number. The one downfall of cellphones these days is that I can't remember anyone's number by heart anymore. It used to be easy, you know? My house was 0-9-3-1. Tara's was 7-7-5-8, when Lettie Mae remembered to pay the bill and not the liquor store. Gran's house was 2-6-"

Eric gently reached out and took his phone from me, stopping my ramble in the process. "Hey! I need to call him! He needs to know we're ok-"

"He will," he replied, popping the phone in his back pocket. He took me by the shoulders, his head craning down. "Look at me."

"I am looking at you," I said, trying to reach around to his butt to get his phone again.

He stilled me. "Quiet," he rasped. "_Look_ at me."

"I _am_ looking at you!" I yelled. "Eric, what are going to do? We've been gone for nine days! Oh, my God, the Authority are going to kill you, aren't they? I'm so sorry, I never should have asked Claudine to help us. I should have known Mab wouldn't come here willingly. What can we possibly tell the Auth-"

"_Quiet_!"

I bit my tongue and glared at him.

His eyes darted around the small circumference of my face, taking in the features he'd seen a thousand times. Our bond was surprisingly silent. He wasn't allowing me to read him.

_What?_ I projected to him.

His hands moved to cup my throat. He moved in closer, bringing his face near mine.

"I want to look at the mother of my child."

_Oh, no_.

I wanted that phone. I wanted to throw myself into a phonecall. Any phonecall. I wanted to assure people, accept their yelling and swearing about what a furtive, inconsiderate friend I was. I wanted to figure out where we were. I wanted to invent our cover story for the Authority and everyone else who wasn't in the loop.

I did NOT want to process what Mab had just told me.

It was too big. It was ridiculous. One day ago, I'd been tentatively okay, even excited, by the idea of a baby. Now? After Mab's doom and gloom? I was terrified. I wasn't going to have a baby. I was going to have a monster.

On instinct, my hands slid to my belly. As if on cue, a small bump had appeared in the short time we'd been away. My eyes widened. My fingers splayed wide and pressed deep, confirming what I knew to be physically impossible.

I was already beginning to show.

"Oh, God."

Eric couldn't see my body through the tent of his coat. Without looking away from his eyes, I took his hand and brought it to my stomach.

His expression became awed. "Mirakulösa," he whispered. He rubbed over the swell reverently. I tried for his phone again. Again, he caught me.

I snorted. "That's one way to see it. But what if Mab is right? What if he's no miracle? What if he's a curse?"

"I prefer to think Claudine is right. A child born of love cannot be a curse. Half of him is you, and you are the purest miracle I've ever witnessed." He paused, Sookie-smiling. "And since when did you learn another Swedish word?"

"Are we allowed to take that risk for everyone? These aren't just our chips on the table, they're everyone's. If Mo brings the end of the world with him, then we're responsible for the deaths of billions! And I didn't learn anything. You said 'miraculous'. That's English, professor."

He cocked his head, his smile lessening. "I did not. I spoke in Swedish."

I shook my head. "Sorry. It was English."

He paused. "_I love you, my angel. I'm nothing without you_."

I gave a puff of laughter. "Thanks. Ditto. And why is Mo bumpy all of a sudden? Is my pregnancy moving faster than others? Or did Faery speed it along somehow?"

At that, he lost his smile altogether. "_Ancient Mandarin is a beautiful language, don't you agree?"_

I shooed his hands away and backed off a bit, annoyed by his inability to stay on topic. "I wouldn't know, I've never heard it. Come on, baby, focus. I need you with me here. Did Ludwig text you while we were gone? I'd like to hear what she found."

He backed away as well, taking a long, pained drag of air that sounded worrying on a man incapable of breathing. "_And Syriac Aramaic? I not speak well, it is very difficult. Godric try to teaches me_."

I shoved my hands on either side of my head, clenching my hair. "Ack, what is _wrong_ with you? Why are you talking about Mandarin and Aramaic and Swedish? And Godric? Babe, I don't _KNOW_! Can we talk about little Mo now please?"

He took one more hard look at me before whispering. "_Water_ _Forget-Me-Nots_."

I gave a stuttering laugh of defeat and sat down in the wet, cold grass, suddenly feeling very tired. I hadn't slept in 216 hours. "You said that in Faery," I muttered as I arranged his coat under my butt to stop the chill from creeping in. "Is that what it smelled like to you? I smelled cookies again, but I doubt the smell of baked goods does much for you."

I stared at the long length of his shins before he slowly knelt down to join me on the ground. A thin, icy blade of fear was working its way into our bond. It wasn't mine, so I cautiously looked into his eyes, trying to understand why he'd become so screwy.

His arms carefully made their way into my space until they gathered me and brought into his body. He'd become still and deliberate in the way he always did when something shocked the shit out of him and made him wary. When he spoke, nothing could have heard the low pitch of his voice as he whispered into my ear.

"The Fae land smelled of you, my lover. I could have lived forever in that place, if only for that reason. The flower I mentioned is the smell of our child. He smells glorious. Of ice in the springtime. In your womb, I can smell home. And the words I've been speaking to you are not English. I think we can assume that you have developed another gift, Sookie. You understand languages. _ All_ languages."

"Ha ha. You're hilarious."

"I'm perfectly serious. Mo has turned you into a universal translator."

"Sweetie, you're not _speaking_ other languages. You're just talkin' in good ole 'Merikin."

"_But I am_," his voice took on a slightly different accent, just as it had three times before now. "_This is Russian. This is Congoese. This is Tok Pisin. If you understand me now, then believe me, you could name your price at the UN_."

I inched my way up onto his lap, away from the freezing grass, closer to the campfire. "That's great," I muttered with zero enthusiasm. "The one merciful thing about bein' a telepath was occassionally hearing people think in foreign languages. It was all Greek to me. Now I'll understand _everyone_."

"You've been gifted with an ability that would take a thousand lifetimes to learn otherwise. Don't whine."

"I'll whine if I want. I'm pregnant and omnilingual. Go buy me some Milk Duds dipped in wasabi."

Aside from a deep rumble, he was silent. After a moment of listening to his brain knit, he asked me. "Can you answer me? In those tongues?"

"I doubt it." I didn't elaborate, or even try to think about the languages he'd supposedly spoken to me in. I was too engrossed in my own fears.

Eric must have felt it, because he didn't press me. Instead, he arranged me so that I was wrapped around his waist, my expanding belly pressed into his abdomen. Once he felt the tight bump nestled between us, his mind went curiously soft and contented. It was right in front of me, so I dropped my head on his shoulder. I felt my worries about our absence and other people's feelings slowly begin to drain away. Eric seemed more than happy to just sit here in the middle of nowhere and bask in his newfound parental status.

It was one of those things - one of the thousand things - that I hadn't gotten around to asking him about. It fell under the huge heading of 'What was your life/unlife like before you met me?' I assumed it was newfound. Like a self-absorbed bitch, I'd never even considered otherwise.

I locked my elbows behind his neck, relaxing into him. "You said 'firstborn' to Mab. Is that true?"

He burrowed his face under his coat on my shoulders and kissed my bare skin. "You're asking if I fathered children as a man?"

"Yes." My voice sounded small. Like I might cry if he admitted to diddling women back when candles ranked in the top five of human inventions. God, I was lame.

And he responded to it. Instantly, there was pain on his side, like he felt _guilty_ for diddling women instead of carrying a torch for a girl who'd be born when candles didn't even rank in the top five hundred. (Unless we were talkin' flameless candles. That was some pretty cool shit.)

He arranged his words carefully. "I... was not married. There were many women, but none were distined to be mine. I was young, and sex between young people was not considered inappropriate, so we used one another. For pleasure. For practice. Several of the girls I had been with became pregnant, but we all of us had multiple partners and the paternity of bastards wasn't relevant. I might have impregnated a woman. But I've never had_ children_."

He emphasized the difference by squeezing me around my middle.

"Weren't you a little old to be a spinster?" I asked.

He chuckled. "Gods, yes. I was already considered old for a single man when Russell killed my parents and baby sister. Before then, I'd been a fuck-up who wallowed between the tits of our servants. After, I took my father's throne and threw myself into violent politics. I fought so recklessly, friends believed I had a death wish. Perhaps I did. And perhaps I got it. Were it not for Godric, I would have succeeded in my suicide by Dane."

My arms tightened fractionally.

"Somehow, I managed to live and die without a good woman at my side," he finished.

"Christ, I'm glad he found you," I said against his ear. "To think you'd have been part of some archaeological discovery. They'd be digging up a new highway in Sweden and find your charred, skeletal ass in a pile of tinder with a sword in your hand."

He smiled against me. "Instead I have you now. And Mo. And many more after him."

"More? You're crazy." How many apocalypses was he interested in starting?

"We're going to live forever. And I have many spinster years to make up for. And we'd barely agreed to our new 'arrangement' before I was busy putting a baby in you, so we have no trouble in the fertility department. He will not be the only, he will merely be the first."

He squeezed me again, his hands snaking up under his coat, fingering dangerously along the exposed back of my halter dress. "Perhaps we should practice."

I snorted into his ear. "You've already got a bullet in the chamber."

"Then let's fill the clip."

"I don't think sperm swims in a holding pattern. I think a new deposit is required each time."

"We'll fuck nonstop and cover both bases then."

He got me with that and I laughed. "Can I call Alcide now?"

He held my face and pulled me back, his eyes dancing in the darkness. "In a minute. I'm not done marveling at my luck. I have a beautiful wife, swollen with child. In my day, my tribe would have celebrated for days. You would have been buried under gifts and happy wishes. Every warrior under my command would have mourned that I'd proven virile with such a coveted woman. Had I failed, you would have been within your rights to leave me. Imagine their disappointment."

He was positively _gloating_ at his long-dead entourage. I blushed, shy at their long-dead (and nonexistant) appraisal.

His smile widened at my embarrassment. "Surely you wouldn't begrudge me a few moments to savour this."

"Savour away," I gave a watery smile. "Can I at least use your phone to check the time and GPS?"

He clucked his tongue, a rebuke for not wanting to party like it was 999. But he gave me his phone, using his free hand to grab my hip and smoosh me harder into him. I could almost _hear_ him bragging to his Viking buddies about how _his_ girl was preggo with _his_ baby and didn't they wish _their_ girlfriends were hot like me.

He gave me back his Smart Phone. The cover he'd chosen for the back was black and read simply _iPhang_. Cute.

The time was 2:39am. The GPS app informed me that we were about thirty miles away from my house. Eric thumbed into his address book and hit Alcide's number for me. I bore through my friend's frantic questions just like I had with Jason. (Though to be fair, Alcide showed more concern and wasn't so easily fobbed off with vague assurances. I had to promise him a lot to appease him.) Most of all, he wanted to know if Hadley and Hunter were in danger. I swore they were safe. He didn't completely believe me, but he felt better than he had before I'd called. I ended the call, knowing my ballout wasn't over until I saw him in person.

I sighed, really feeling it now. "So what do we do now?"

He stood, still holding me close. "Despite the date, I recommend the same action. We fly to the stilt house and wait out the day. Your purse and phone are there. We'll check our messages, return the ones we can, and plan our stories for those that need one." He dropped fang, startling me. "And you'll feed me. I want to look for my son in your blood. And you'll fuck me. I want your pregnant belly in my hands as you come for me."

I kissed him. I agreed into his mouth.

He took off into the night sky.


	41. Chapter 41

**A/N: Eric's POV. Thanks, y'all.**

We landed at our stilt home just after three o'clock in the morning. Prime vampire hours. The many, many vampires I needed to call were awake and going about their business. The humans and shifters were no doubt all sleeping in their warm, comfy beds, tired from a long day's work and happily sawing logs in dreamland.

So I called Sam Merlotte first.

It rang several times before he picked up, cursing as something fell over. "Yeah?"

"Merlotte. It's Eric Northman."

"Wha? Jesus, man. Couldn'ta called me at nine? Four days ago?" He picked something up from the floor, only to stumble several steps and hit something heavy. He swore again.

"You're right. Let me find my royal crested stationary and jot down when it's best to contact a shifter booze slinger in the ass end of my territory. Merlotte is spelled with two Ts, correct?" Shithead.

"Y'all get royal stationary?"

"What the fuck do you want? I assume you didn't call to flirt this deftly."

I heard his muscles stretch as he arched his neck and shoulders, shooing away his tiredness. "Boy, I can see why Sookie fell for that silver tongue of yours."

I looked over at Sookie. She'd changed into some sweats that she'd found in the only bedroom and was currently scrubbing the coffee pot, which had been left on in our absence. It had powered down eventually, but not before burning its contents into a stubborn film of cinder. As badly as she wanted a cup, she wasn't about to drink black carbon. She'd also found the bread, butter and cereal that Pam had bought. She looked over at me and blew me a kiss as she made her breakfast.

"Sookie has no complaints about my tongue." No reason not to rub it in. "Is she the reason you called? Honestly, Sammy. Envy green is a color that just doesn't suit you."

"Fuck you and your dead, crown-wearing ass. I'm callin' you about Jessica."

"Bill's progeny?"

"Yeah. Get your tongue offa Sookie long enough to take care of your own, why dontcha?"

The fire I had started nine days ago/two hours ago was just as cold and cindery as Sookie's coffee pot. Balancing my phone between my ear and shoulder, I quickly began to rebuild it. Despite wearing warm clothes and trying to make a hot drink, I could still feel Sookie's chill. Now that my adorable little mate was pregnant, it was my job to keep her warm. I piled it twice as high as before and struck a match.

"What's wrong with her?"

"Com'on, Eric. Her maker's dead. She doesn't know how or why, but she felt her connection with him detonate over two weeks ago. She hasn't had any luck with the AVL or the Authority. No one will tell her anything, not even to verify if he's gone, which she already knows damn well."

"As her sheriff and now her king, I am her first point of contact if she had concerns about her maker's disappearance. Why did she not come to me?"

The dog made a noise of irritation. "Maybe cuz she knows you hate Bill, genius. Or maybe she was building up the courage to bring her problem to the_ only other vampires she knows_, but then you took a powder. Pam told her to fuck off. Told her if she wanted to find Bill, to try the Yellow Pages under Traitors and Lying Fuckwits. Now Jess barely talks, she's so fuckin' depressed. And I don't know what she's eating or who, but she looks awful. If Pam is the face of your retinue when you're MIA, you might wanna consider making some more children. Ones with better customer service ethics."

I snorted. If only he knew. Perhaps when Mo was older he could be my Chief of Staff.

"Tell Jessica to come to me at Fangtasia tomorrow night. Tell her she needn't be afraid. I'll give her the answers she needs, and I'll help her through her pain." Shithead or no, he was right. I hadn't spared a single thought for Miss Hamby after Bill's liquidation. My tie to Godric still felt like a phantom limb, torturing me with fleeting moments where I believed he was still with me. But, no. It lay severed and dead at the bottom of my skull, the beautiful magic that connected us strangled out of it. The only thing that made it bearable was the fact that Godric had chosen his fate.

Bill was no Godric, but a maker was a maker. Jessica, still a fledgling, would be in agony.

Merlotte was silent for a moment. "Christ. He really is dead, ain't he? She's not just assuming the worst?"

"No," I decided to be direct. "Bill Compton is dead. A vampire always knows when her maker is lost. I will tell her what I know and give her the support she needs to bear up under it."

More silence. "Thank you," he replied, with much less hostility. "I can't help her. I want to, but I ain't equipped. She needs her own kind, like we all do now and then."

"Understood. Tomorrow. Midnight."

"She'll be there."

We hung up.

Sookie had stopped moving in the kitchen. I looked up to find her hand pressed over her mouth. "Jessica," she whispered. "I'm a horrible person. I never even thought about her after..." she didn't finish.

"Nor did I," I admitted. "And that was remiss of me. She is in my territory, alone and without a nest. She is vulnerable."

She nodded, staring off into space. "I can be such a bitch sometimes, always imagining my problems are the biggest and baddest. Meanwhile a friend is heartbroken. And scared. And it's partly because of me."

Anger arced from me and smacked into her sadness. "You did nothing. Bill made his choice. His death was waiting for him after he joined Sophie Anne and turned his back on the Authority. Believe me, lover. A quick death by _my_ Radia was a gift compared to how they would have punished him." I emphasized that his death was mine. And that I'd inadvertantly been very fair.

She was still struggling with it. She'd never fully come to terms with it since we'd been so busy. Every day since we'd come together had been filled with some drama or other. It had shielded her from the full weight of her grief that was simply waiting for a quiet moment to press harder. I would not allow that moment to be now. Not when I had plans to celebrate.

I pointed towards her food. "Eat, please. You need your strength."

She didn't look at the plate she'd arranged. "What will you tell Jessica?"

"What I've told everyone else. Hadley killed that nest and good riddance. That she saved our kind from a serious headache and Bill was colatoral damage. I'll offer her relocation to a nest, if she'd like to move out of the old Compton place. I'll offer her work at Fangtasia, if she'd prefer to be among vampires. I'll offer her the protection of a maker, en lieu of Bill. I _did_ kill him. The least I can do is provide for his child."

Sookie hugged herself. I sensed that she was hugging_ me_ across the room. "You are a good man, Eric Northman."

"I'm nowhere near. But I pay my debts, at the very least."

"Honorable, then. You're an honorable man."

I bowed slightly. "Your opinion is precious to me."

She turned back to her food and her own phone, scrolling through her text messages and deleting as she went. I assumed the bulk were from Jason and Herveaux. She had a short leash, as it was charging from an outlet above the counter. She pulled up a bar stool, balancing her plate on her lap as she read.

I went back to my own phone. To avoid the call I loathed making, I called the various kings and queens that had tried to reach me. The queen of Arkansas had merely wanted to confirm her presence at an AVL event in February and request I make a residence available for her. I gave her the standard permission to enter my land and gave her a vampire-friendly mansion in New Orleans for her and her retinue. She was wholly ignorant of my absence and I simply apologized for taking a few nights to get back to her. She said she understood and congratulated me on my acquisition of two states. Annis Varya, her name was. I knew I'd liked her for a reason. For a queen, she gave even less a shit about politics than I did.

The king of Missouri, however, was a cock. It was clear from our brief conversation that he was interested only in fucking me. He'd berated me for not contacting him sooner, and again for "making him" deal with Pam like he was a lowly delivery man. Finally, after he'd pissed in my ear for seven minutes, he finally announced that he and Sophie Anne had a prior agreement that entitled him to 5% of the generated income of Louisiana vampire businesses. Owning several of those businesses myself, I knew his claim was absolute bullshit. But I smiled into the phone and told him I'd look into her books to find out what was owed to whom. I had zero plans to pay him, but the last thing I needed right now was another fucking frenemy.

We hung up.

Sookie had set her phone aside and was eating her toast, watching me thoughtfully. "Nice guy?"

"Extorting asshole."

"Hmm," she offered, chewing quietly. "Hadley's staying at Alcide's place. She left me a ton of messages, each one slightly racier than the last, not that she'd think so. Sounds like he swept her up and ran off with her after finding out we were missing. She's working for him, too. He wouldn't let her go back to Fangtasia." She took another bite, trying not to smile. "I bet this house that they're having comfort sex like two bereaved rabbits."

I nodded. I never bet against a sure thing.

She shrugged, totally convinced. "So, what's the story? I know you're avoiding Domingo and the Authority. What do you plan to tell them?"

I grunted. "I'm questioning the wisdom of simply telling Massawa the truth. He already knows your origins. Admitting that I got sucked into their world for a few minutes wouldn't expose us in any way that I can figure."

She took a sip of cinder-free coffee. "That feels like a big, damn deal, even though you're right. I can't see the harm. What about Domingo?"

"What he tells his lackey isn't my concern."

"What if Massawa blabs our secret?"

"Men who predate the Copper Age didn't get here by blabbing."

She blew air through her lips like a nickering horse. "Fine. You get him more than I do. If you think it's okay, then go ahead and tell him the truth. Minus the stuff about Mo, of course."

"I'll consider it. Unless I can come up with a lie that explains our absence, why we didn't communicate with anyone, why I abandoned my post, and doesn't insult their intelligence."

She smirked. "So an alien abduction is out then?"

"Yes."

"Shotgun Vegas wedding?"

"Hardly."

"A witch's curse that left us total amnesiacs?"

"Now it's just getting stupid."

She finished off the last bite. "Fine. A visit to the in-laws in Neverland it is."

I turned my back on the growing fire and joined her in the kitchen. Turning her closed thighs to me, I grabbed her plate off her lap and threw it in the sink. It broke neatly in half.

"Hey!" she sputtered.

I skidded her phone to the far side of the bar before lifting her off her stool and onto the slightly higher countertop. She was all wide eyes and reprimand, which grew in volume when I stripped her of her track pants. Once again, she wasn't wearing panties.

I dropped to my knees before her, holding her knees apart. Over her breathy objections, I buried my face in her pussy and took a long, soothing drag. _Yes. This was what I needed._

"Eric!"

I parted her folds and took an equally long lick. I groaned as taste joined scent. The honey wheat of my lover combined with the icy floral scent of my child. Sookie gasped. Her hands shot backwards, bracing herself as she arched instinctively.

"You... you're just avoiding that phonecall," she whispered.

_Yes._ "I'm fulfilling a promise."

Her tanned thighs trembled on either side of my face. I could hear her blood pulsing through them. And just a few inches from my nose, nestled deep in her flesh, was Mo.

"I haven't had you like this in ages," I muttered, continuing to lap.

"It..it's...been two days," she argued weakly, widening herself to my explorations.

"Correction. Eleven days." I began to stroke her outer thighs to ease her excited nerves as I worked her. I looked up and found her straining, her shaply body hidden under a baggy black sweatshirt, her eyes shut tight, her mouth open slightly. "Where's the dress I bought you? This is the second time I've been denied the right to tear it off you."

She opened her eyes, only to look away shyly. "It was too tight," she said softly.

I growled, remembering why. I reached up and tore the sweatshirt off her without moving her a single inch. She gasped again, all pert breasts, lush hips and a noticeably rounded belly.

My sanity deserted me. My fangs took its place. I dove into her thigh and bit.

Sookie shrieked. She grabbed me by the back of my head, her fingers digging into my scalp as she forced me harder into her skin. "_Yesssss_!" she hissed with pleasure.

I drank deeply. I threw myself into her flavor, combing through each delicious strand that wove into it. I found all of Sookie's ingredients, made impossibly sweeter by our visit to Faerie. I pushed my tongue to the roof of my mouth, trying to pin down the newest essence to join the fray.

_Hoar frost._

Taken from the most frigid landscape and scooped into my mouth, melting for the first time in decades. I remembered for the first time since my turning the sensation of the prickly little crystals as they softened and puddled around my human tongue, the flavor of the purest element of the north. I'd often stared at its spidery formations, memorizing its swirls and serrated beauty.

Was this the bond's doing? The proof to assure me this child was mine? Not that I needed it. Sookie's word was enough. But the fact that his presence in Sookie had turned her into a dizzying combination of sun and ice completely enslaved me. As if I weren't already.

I made a half-hearted attempt to reassert my better judgment and disengage from her. I needed to be gentle with her. I wasn't allowed to lose my shit and risk draining her. But Sookie heard my thoughts and held me tighter, shaking her head emphatically. "No," she said. "Don't stop."

_I'll damage you_, I thought to her, taking another pull despite my fears.

She shook her head again. "Claudine says you can't because of the bond. Not even if you wanted to, remember? You can drink me for hours, she said."

That's true. She had said that. I took another mouthful. And another. Moaning against her, I brought my fingers to her entrance and pet her gently. She fell back on her elbows, completely lost to pleasure.

"Can you...taste him?" she keened, jerking forward, riding my fingers.

_Yes._

"Oh, God. ...What's it like?"

_Home. Wonder. The miracle of finding another soul that I love as much as I do you._

My finger sank into her tight heat. I slowed my draws so that they echoed each deep pump inside her.

She unspooled in minutes, crying out and trembling under my mouth. Her pulse quickened and caused a flood down my throat. I took it gratefully, letting myself drink much more than I normally would before unsheathing my fangs and licking the wound.

I stood up between her legs. Her eyes were heavy and unfocused, yet she stared at my clothes in distaste. "No fair."

I moved to unzip myself and finish my promise right there in the kitchen, but she closed her fingers around my wrists.

"No," she said. "I'm sicka hard surfaces. Take me to bed."

I laughed and zipped us into the bedroom. Her dress was laying out on the duvet, which I tossed aside before I upended her (gently) onto it. She joined me in laughing, looking positively edible as she crossed her legs and arms in front of her nudity. "I showed you mine," she pouted up at me.

I took her hand and placed it on my shirt. "Do something about it."

An evil expression crossed her face as her hand lit up and shucked me naked like a cob of corn. My clothes were not just tossed aside, but shot out of the closed window across the room, shattering the glass on impact. There was a soft splash as they landed in the swamp below. We both stared at the jagged hole in disbelief.

Sookie's eyes widened, then she burst into hysterical laughter. "I can't believe I did that!" She locked her arms around her bent legs and buried her face in her thighs, convulsing with mirth.

Devoid of clothes, I knuckled onto the bed and jerked her underneath me. She squealed, laughing even harder. "I'm sorry! I'm so..._so_ sorry!"

"Liar!"

"I know, but I'm really _trying_ to be!" She was so damn pleased with herself. Glowing with pride, she was so wickedly pretty. She broke the window and ruined my things, and all I could do was worship her.

I kissed her and immediately shut her up. She squeaked with surprise, then settled into happy purrs as she returned it. Her fingers traced down my chest and stomach until she gripped me in both hands. I hissed, baring my fangs at her.

She leaned back onto the mattress and smiled up at me. "Tell me you love me in every language you know."

I obeyed. With each slow stroke she delivered, I repeated the sentence over and over. The words I spoke should have meant nothing to her, and yet her pleasure grew with each one. After the tenth when I said it Vietnamese, she shocked me when she whispered 'Thank you' in the same tongue. Her accent was flawless. Better than mine. We paused a moment, taking in the significance, then I continued.

"_I love you_." Portugeuse.

"_Thank you_."

"_I love you_." Nepali.

"_Thank you_."

"_I love you_." Iranian.

"_Thank you_."

"_I love you_." Algonquin.

"_Thank you_."

On and on and on.

At last, I ran out of languages. I had a feeling that she was just getting started. I kissed her again. "You are magfinicent."

She pushed up into me, wrapping her legs around me. "I'm not," she disagreed. "I only hear English. I'm just copying your accent. It's the only thing that changes, the words are always the same."

"Remarkable." And invaluable. Like Pam, I would now be able to communicate with her in a crowded room, if necessary, if our emotional telepathy wasn't adequate.

She rained kisses on my throat impatiently. "Maybe we can move onto the physical portion of the test?"

"Yes, Sookie."

I should have rolled and perched her on top of me. Perhaps sat up with her wrapped around my hips. She was so small, and her womb was busy creating a fragile little life. I needed to be careful, I didn't care if I had Claudine's word that I couldn't hurt Sookie and the Scion was unkillable. Right now, there was simply a pregnant human girl beneath me.

And yet, I couldn't stop myself from nudging her thighs further apart and settling most of my weight on top of her. Her bump pressed firmly into my lower belly. It clicked into place between us like a key.

Sookie was about to plead again when I positioned myself and slowly slid into her wonderful, wet heat. Her words faltered and her eyes rolled back. She arched up to meet me, her hips moving in time to the lazy rhythm I'd set. She bit her lips, eyes shut tight.

Moaning. Gasping. Little whimpers of encouragement. I watched her grow amusingly impatient as she realized I wasn't going to push harder.

"You're not fucking a crystal vase," she chided, her hands sliding down my back and gripping my butt.

I tapped her nose. She flinched and automatically opened her eyes. I kissed her forehead. Her cheeks. Her chin. Her ears. I never quickened my pace. "How often do we make love slowly?" I asked her.

She turned her face into each kiss. "Almost never. Who has the will power for it? Or the time?"

"As of tonight, me. Slow, soft, sweet. That's the only side you'll see of me until further notice." I reached between us, under the bump, and played with her clit. The small bundle of nerves practically leapt between my fingers. Her fingers dug into my ass. Her pussy clenched me tight as a snare.

"So mean," she whimpered, reaching up with one hand to trace my face. "Soft and sweet is _not_ the guy I fell for."

"Liar," I accused again. "Soft and sweet fixed your house. They sent you flowers. They crushed my harder, angrier inclinations. They own me when I touch you. When I think about you. Compared to how I _can_ be, for you, I'm a fucking saint."

She beamed wide as her fingertips found the points of my fangs. "Saint Eric," she giggled, hiking her legs higher around my lower back.

I nodded sagely. "Patron saint of Stockholm," I informed her honestly. Not that that sanctimonious fuck was any relation.

She laughed heartily at that and pulled me down for a long, searing kiss that had me bucking harder than I'd wanted and giving her the orgasm she craved. Shivering and sobbing against my fangs, Sookie's vibrations and my wrung-out dick sent me over the edge as well. So much for slow.

She heard my annoyance.

"Any slower and you'll never get to that phonecall. Go on. Ring, ring."

I cursed and withdrew from her, hating how cold I felt without her around me. My phone was in the living room, which was way the hell out there, but I guess it could be worse. It could have been in my pocket, which was now underwater.

I zipped out and back in half a second, holding the offending object. Before I could talk myself out of it, I woke it up and jabbed his number.

He answered. Fuck. I was hoping for voicemail.

"King Northman. Goodness, I was beginning to fear the worst. Where have you been?" Domingo sounded pleasant enough, though I detected a pissy undertone.

"Paulo. My apologies for not returning your messages until now."

"Messages? You've been missing, sir. Not even your progeny could enlighten us on your whereabouts. You deserted your throne a week after accepting it. I know you had reservations about becoming king, but is this the level of professionalism we can expect from you?"

Christ. "Of course not. I assure you, I have a very legitimate reason for my absence."

I could almost hear his indulgent smile. _Smug pencil pusher_. "I'm all ears."

"I'm afraid I have to disappoint them. I'll explain myself only to the Magister. Directly."

"Unfortunately that's not possible. I am his new Attaché and all of his corresondence must go directly through me. You may be assured of my discretion in regards to sensitive information," he spoke in a low, pacifying tone, as if trying to calm a nervous poodle to stop it from pissing on the rug. _Asshole_.

"Appreciated. I'll be sure to remember the next time I have a super-big, important secret to give him. This time, however, I must insist. The Magister will have a special understanding of my situation."

There was silence on the line. Then, "I must tell him _something_."

I sighed dramatically. "Fine. Tell him I was visiting my in-laws. I shall be at Fangtasia tomorrow night, if he'd care to speak to me about it."

Domingo scoffed. "Surely you don't expect me to give him such a flippant, disrespectful message."

"I do. Word for word. Have a fabulous evening and congratulations on your appointment." I terminated the call before he could respond.

Sookie had been on the bed the entire time, wrapped up in the comforter and watching me with an amused expression. "Think he'll show up tomorrow night?"

"I have no idea. If Domingo can manage not to be a sniveling cunt for three minutes, my message should reach Massawa intact. Hopefully he'll know enough about the Fae to be satisfied with our disappearance at their whim. He might not care. He might be curious on an academic level. He might view our truancy as a threat from an ancient enemy. He might be annoyed that I'm prone to abduction. We'll see. The point is, he's already in the know."

She unwrapped herself from the chocolate-colored blankets and started to lay them flat on the bed again. "Grab my purse, would you?"

It was dangling from my hand before she finished her question. She smirked as she took it from me. "Lie down."

"Ready for more, lover?"

"Later. Right now, just get on your stomach."

I cocked my head, but did as she asked. Crawling onto the silky spread, I lay down next to her sitting form, watching as she fished in her bag and pulled out a travel-sized tube of hand lotion. "What are you going to do?"

She squeezed a generous dollop into her palm and rubbed her hands together. "You're getting cranky and tired. You've been running full speed and haven't had a break. I can't exactly take you to a spa out here in the middle of nowhere, so I'll just have to relax you myself." She held up her shiny hands. "Ready?"

"You're going to massage me?"

She nibbled her lip nervously. "Yes?"

The Radia clenched me slightly, my heart touched by her concern. "There is no need, Sookie. My muscles don't get sore like humans. Take my place and I'll rub you instead."

She shook her head emphatically. "Nope. I feel great, though I'll hang onto that offer when I'm a huge, waddling penguin with swollen ankles. Right now, I just was to take care of you." She batted her huge eyes at me. "Please?"

I dropped my head to the mattress and closed my eyes. "I'm yours to command."

She giggled with happiness and straddled my ass. With her bare body pressed tightly into mine, I already felt fantastic. But the moment her warm little hands made contact with my shoulders, I knew I'd been wrong. My muscles weren't sore, but they loved being tended. I grunted in appreciation as she dug the pads of her fingers between my shoulder blades.

"Feel good?"

"Yes." Fuck, yes.

"Good," she murmured, working her way down slowly. "Did you see the message from Ludwig? She has my test results."

"I did," I replied. Jesus, was this was all massages felt like? Why the hell had I never gotten one after I turned? I assumed they would have been wasted on me, but feeling Sookie stroke my ancient body reminded me just how old it really was. I should have treated it to this more often. "I've replied and requested that she come to Fangtasia tomorrow night with her diagnosis. I'd like to hear a medical opinion and not just a queen's."

"Me too," she said. She braced her knuckles against my lower ribs and pressed her thumbs into the dense tissue surrounding my spine. "_Fuck_," I hissed, splaying wider under her hands. "Where did you learn to do this?"

She chuckled. "Jason. Being the QB1 may have looked glamorous to all the cheerleaders, but to his sister, it meant a whiny baby begging for a back rub. That game tied him in so many knots, he felt like a Chinese puzzle."

I groaned again when she swept up to work on my neck, pressing her breasts lightly against me. Her dagger pendant lifted and dropped softly between them. "You're not acting like my sister," I warned darkly.

She kissed the rim of my ear as she worked. "You get the special, naked rubdown. It's so exclusive that no one's ever had it."

"I'd kill anyone you named otherwise."

She squeezed my upper arms. "Oh, you and your death threats."

We settled into a comfortable silence as she continued to work me. I was hard from her ministrations, but that wasn't new. It was a common occurrence in her presence. I felt no urgency to relieve it, I simply basked in her attention. She shifted to sit on my thighs as she started in on my ass. Normally I would have teased her, but I knew from the bond that she meant nothing sexual by it. She drilled into the enormous muscle group, hell-bent on massaging it soft and pliable.

Her voice startled me. "You might have three guests tomorrow night. Did you mean to set it up that way?"

She'd rubbed me into a state where talking seemed a chore. "Not really. There's no reason to stagger their visits. They're all coming on very different business and are wholly ignorant of each other."

She thought a moment, laughing through her nose as she moved lower again to my thighs. It was getting dangerous now. Her intentions were pure and sweet, but she was beginning to play with an area that did not share her purity.

"What's funny?"

Between my spread legs, I felt her fingers caress balls. They tightened. I growled.

"It sounds like the opening of a joke." She cupped me. I lifted slightly from the bed to give her better access. "A fledgling, an ancient and a monster doctor walk into a bar..."

She nudged me to flip over. My cock was suddenly in her mouth. She sucked away all interest I had in the punchline.


	42. Chapter 42

**A/N: Jeepers! "Five, As Agreed Upon" won the Fangreaders' Dr. Ludwig Award! Big thanks and little kisses to the voters! As for PK, she might not have been invited to the prom this year, but she's still super-psyched about her ONE MILLION HITS! She'd totally ask all of you out on a date, if she could. Sookie's POV. **

Show time.

After spending a much-needed evening making love, Eric and I had spent the morning and midday fast asleep, tangled up in each other with a cool breeze filtering through the window I broke. (I hoped Eric proved handy, as I didn't think the glass people made housecalls in Mudville, USA.) When we woke, his mood seemed to have improved dramatically. My massage had taken a very surprising turn, when watching my own fingers, I saw little bolts of Light flare up and transfer into Eric's skin. Moaning gratefully, he'd been none the wiser that his rubdown was a bit more sparkly than ordinary. Smiling to myself, I kept silent. I didn't think he'd appreciate my informing him that his vampiric skin "sparkled."

Once he deemed it safe, he flew us back into Shreveport. He wanted us in wardrobe when the curtain went up.

And now it was barely nine o'clock at night, and Fangtasia's crowd was thin and mostly breathing, but already, we had our first guest show up. Jessica, far from the fair and perky teen I'd known not one month ago, sat alone at one of the tables near the stage. Pale even at her healthiest, she now looked ghastly. Her normally shiny red hair hung lifelessly around her shoulders and looked as lackluster and sickly as old, caked blood. Her eyes were rimmed from too little rest and too many bloody tears. She was dressed in plain jeans, a ragged hoodie and a pair of Converse that had seen better days. She was hunched over, her arms folded up between her thighs, her head nearly touching the table. A Tru Blood sat untouched in front of her. I imagined that dozens of bottles had been wasted in the same manner, Sam heating one after the other, insisting she eat, and getting nothing but a twenty-dollar loss a pop.

A sad, dead orphan.

Occassionaly, she would look up at Eric's empty throne. He hadn't made an appearance yet, nor did he ever until both clock hands were out of the big numbers and into the little ones. The folks didn't come for an over-eager host. They came for a tiger who entered and exited the public part of the enclosure whenever he fuckin' felt like it. Maybe he'd sit on his perch and give them a thrill. Maybe he'd charge the fence just to watch them jump. Maybe they'd leave the zoo without a sighting, but dang wasn't it exciting to think he might be in the back eating a gazelle?

I rolled my eyes.

People were idiots.

But Jessica wasn't. She simply had nowhere else to be. So she waited.

I watched from the portal window of the backroom, standing on my tip toes. Suddenly there was a wall at my back, one that didn't need to stand on tiptoe to see over my head.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

I didn't turn around. "Feeling guilty. You really shouldn't keep her waiting, baby. It's cruel. Nobody cares if you cut her some slack and grant an early audience. Just look at her," I pressed my fingers into the glass, "She's broken."

"No," he spoke kindly. "If she were broken, she'd be dead. Children truly damaged by their maker's end simply refuse to go on. They pick fights with stronger opponents. They stop eating all together. They glamor a human to stake them. The strongest walk into the sun and stay there. Jessica mourns, but she's fighting. I see it. She will heal eventually."

I couldn't believe we were looking at the same person. "Fighting? She looks as limp as sour milk in a wig."

"Give her time. She'll curdle into a very strong cheese."

I snorted. Turning to him, I was momentarily sidetracked by my pretty, pretty tiger. Black leather pants, finished off with a thick, rough belt and aged silver buckle that looked more like an S&M prop than an accessory. I'd have to fortify myself against all female customers imagining him slowly drawing it out of his belt loops, wrapping it around his knuckles, or halving it into a whip. Or just popping it open and demanding they suck him back to life.

Too bad. He wasn't a hitter (of lovers) and the eternal hope of sucking him back to life was MY job.

His black wife beater topped the outfit, his talisman visible with the low neckline. His hair was slicked back. Overall, it was a severe, unforgiving look.

My costume, however, was downright baffling.

I'd stood in his office just before opening, holding my arms out wide. "Pick your poison," I said, offering myself. "Leather? Spikes? Safety pins? Enough kohl to make me blind? Go on and doll me up Fangtasia-style."

He looked at me thoughtfully. I'd managed to find another pair of shapeless sweats at the house, which I'd thrown on before putting my hair up in a ponytail. I looked plain as Jane and was completely open to being transformed in my vampire king's image. He had insisted I sit with him tonight by his throne, which was a first since we'd bonded. I hadn't been up there with him since the very first night we'd met. For the last few weeks, when he brought me to work, I stayed in the back, helping him with admin and sitting in on his private meetings. I wasn't part of the zoo.

But tonight, I would be. So I prepared myself to play the part.

After what seemed like a really long time, Eric finally turned to the endless piles of boxes he kept of new clothes for me (Why not just put them on a rack?) and carefully selected a rather plain brown one. I took it from him, rather surprised that Gothic clothing would come in such drab wrapping, but once I opened it, I looked up at him with a frown.

"I don't understand."

He had already settled behind his desk, typing furiously on his keyboard. He looked up momentarily at the open box in my lap. "You don't approve?"

I looked back down at the lovely coral pink dress. It had the same fun, girly lines to it that many of my sundresses had, though this dress was meant for fancier outtings. The bodice was an intricate braid of silky material, cut snugly along the bust. Strapless. The skirt had an A line, landing just at my knees. The cut was clever, and slackened just under my boobs, obscuring the true shape of my belly. Under the dress were white plastic bangles for my wrists and a headband that was the same shade of pink. I didn't see shoes, but he always had a pair for me, so I wasn't worried about going pregnant _and_ barefoot.

Still.

In this getup, I wouldn't look like a vampire companion. I'd look like me.

"Is this really what you want me to wear?"

He leaned back from his desk, giving me his full attention. "Would you prefer leather and spikes? I didn't buy any for you, but we can raid Pam's office if that's what you'd rather."

I ran my hands over the delicate weave as it tracked between the breasts and down the lower abdomen. It was, without a doubt, a beautiful, happy dress. "This is exactly what I'd choose if you gave me all the dresses in the world to pick from. But that's not the point. We're on display. And right now, we look like Gomez Addams and _I Dream of Jeannie_." I gave him a playful quirk of my brow. "I'm pretty sure this violates your branding."

Cool blue appraised me. He'd said simply. "Fuck it."

And that was that. And now here I stood. Pink from head to peep toe, looking as fresh as strawberry cream. In a bar full of sore thumbs, I was the brightest of them all.

But the public viewing of the king and his bubblegum consort would come later. Right now, I just wanted him to help my friend.

He gave it a moment's thought, then relented. "Pam," he spoke in a low voice to the vampire at the other end of the room. "Bring the girl. Be gentle."

Pam, who'd been admiring her nails while working the door, turned towards his voice, then walked across the room to Jessica's table. Jessica raised her head again as Pam said something to her.

"Should I leave you two alone?" I asked without looking at him. "I don't want to intrude on her pain."

"No," he answered. "You're my consort. You stay for all business unless a superior vampire is present and asks you to leave. The girl is inconsequential."

I turned and gave him a disapproving look.

He saw it. "The girl," he amended slowly, "is unaffiliated with politics."

"Got it."

In the bar, Pam was gesturing (gently) to us behind the door. Jessica nodded with jittery little jerks of her head, wiping her cheeks and standing up. She made a hurried attempt to smooth her plain clothing, seeming to realize that she hadn't dressed to be received by a king. Pam watched impassively, then said something which I'm sure sounded like, "Eric doesn't give a fuck about your outfit, sweetheart. He gives a fuck about moving your ass when he summons you."

For Pam, being gentle meant she used 'fuck' no more than twice in one scolding.

Jessica nodded again, dropping her hands too quickly, then shuffled her way towards us.

Eric took my hand. "Come. Sit by my side. Offer condolence only if she breaks down. Don't speak of Bill unless she asks you. Yes?"

I took his advice on board as we made our way into his office. I took my new chair next to his behind his desk, crossing my ankles and sitting up straight. I tried to look official and kind in the same expression as a small knock hit the door.

"Enter," Eric called.

Jessica opened the door and I instantly hated that I was part of this talk. Up close, she looked even worse. At least corpses were relaxed and inanimate, no matter how they met their end. Jessica looked tortured and dead at the same time. The worst possible combination of the two. She looked plaintively at Eric, and made no move to walk further into his office once the door closed behind her. Her fear of this man, her king and her sire's hated enemy, was palpable.

I reached to Eric and silently begged him to be good to her.

I know he felt it, but he gave no outward sign.

Instead, he gestured to the chair in front of his desk. "Jessica. Sit."

Staring at him like he had a gun on her, she obeyed, lowering herself into the seat, her posture so stiff it looked painful.

"Eric," she acknowledged, then started and quickly made to rise from the chair. "I'm sorry. I don't know what to call you. Do I bow first? I wasn't taught how to greet a king, so do I call you something differ-?"

He raised his hand in the air and cut her off. "Eric is fine. Sitting is fine. Other monarchs will demand for formality, but I do not." He paused until she timidly put herself back into the chair. "Not from friends, anyway."

I let out a tiny breath of relief and hugged our bond gratefully.

Over the next half hour, Eric patiently explained our version of events. The queen. Bill's admirable, but politically incorrect choice to stay with her. My cousin and her decision to stop her at all costs. Eric's and my limited involvement in the whole affair. Hadley coming to Eric after torching everyone else. Jessica listened quietly, her eyes focused on the rug. She'd ask a question now and then, but mostly she just seemed to slouch with each passing minute, the weight of closure bending her in half.

Neither vampire looked at me. I was more than happy to be ignored.

When she'd heard it all, she finally looked up. "Hadley killed Bill? And you took her in?"

I stiffened. We were entering tricky territory now. Eric's eyes turned decidedly chilly. "Yes."

"After what she did to one of us? One of your own subjects?"

"Hadley saved us from a red nightmare that would have resulted in many more true deaths. Bill would have been executed the minute the Authority found her nest. Either way, your maker was screwed. Hadley's intervention was a godsend and you will quash any infantile notions of revenge you plan on taking. Hadley is mine. Touch her and I'll kill you myself after I hunt you for sport."

Jessica immediately cowered, drawing her legs up, as if lava were inching toward the chair legs. Hiding her face behind the curtain of her hair, she muttered, "I wasn't plannin' to hurt her. I'm just angry is all. And... sad, I guess. I've lost my second father, and the better of the two at that."

I felt something in Eric shift dramatically. Again, not that anyone other than me would ever guess. "You're entitled," he allowed softly. "Losing a maker is a pain unlike any other. Feel angry. Feel sad. But_ do_ nothing."

She sniffed. I saw the beginnings of red tears in the rims of her eyes. "Yessir."

An air of settlement came over us as Eric sat more comfortably in his seat, signalling that the unpleasantries were now over. He gauged her for a moment before continuing. "What do you want, Jessica Hamby?"

She drew her brows together. "Sir?"

"Want. What do you want? You're currently haunting your maker's antebellum shack and working in a grease fire waiting to happen. Are these the dreams you'd hoped to realize?"

She scoffed. "My dreams consisted of getting out from under my parents' roof. Since then, I've just been happy to be free."

"Your boredom will soon overtake your joy. You need a long-term plan. So, what would you like to do with yourself?"

She wet her lips nervously. Eric noted her fear to answer him. "Speak candidly," he said.

"Well, sir. My freedom and immortality won't pay the bills on their own. I have no money. No education. No home outside of Bill's, and I don't even know what's going to happen to that property, now that he's gone. Living under his floorboards and working at Sam's is about all I _can_ do. For now."

I looked at Eric. He seemed amused by her words. "You haven't considered glamoring a rich human for money and shelter?"

Her pale eyes widened. She shook her head hard. "I'm a good girl, sir. I stole a plastic watch from a Walmart when I was six, but that was it. God punishes the greedy and the thieves. I'll make my own way. I've got nuthin' but time."

His amusement increased at her Christian morals. I crinkled my nose at his dismissiveness towards our newfangled religion and its core beliefs. Surely Vikings didn't go around pinching money off each other without retribution. All people hated a cheat.

"What of your human lover? The tall boy? I understood him to be yours."

Pain etched deeper into her features. "I broke up with Hoyt after I felt Bill die. He was a good man, but he couldn't help me. He needs a nice girl. And I need space. We ended things on a civil note."

Eric must have admired her. He smiled at her and meant it. I relaxed even more. For the first time, I felt we were going to forge a good relationship with Bill's 'baby girl'.

He spoke finally. "I like your tenacity. And your pluck. Your turning, while arbitrary, has enriched our population. Bill accidentally made an excellent vampire."

Jessica gave him a pinched smile. "After he finished beating himself up about it, he thought so, too."

With that, Eric sat forward suddenly, his fingers a blur on his keyboard. "You're my subject now, so 'your way' is now mine to provide. Continue to be a good girl, an active member of our community, a model of mainstreaming. You may stay at Compton's if you wish, but I can furnish you your own home, which you might want to consider. As of next term, you will continue your education at LSU."

Jessica's eyes widened further. "I'm just a waitress. I couldn't afford _half_ of what you're-,"

"You are not a waitress. You're my Chief of Operations and you now answer to Pam. You'll take night courses on the evenings you do not work. To provide for your immediate requirements, I'm setting you up with twenty thousand dollars. Once you've worked for me for a suitable amount of time and have garnered some workplace skills, you'll apply to the AVL for employment."

Her eyes were now traffic lights. "Eric...sir, I..."

He paused typing and looked up. "What?"

"I...couldn't possibly..."

"I won't play king to a pile of nocturnal white trash. Your betterment is more for me than it is you. The Authority is always watching. They snicker at kingdoms like Nebraska and Georgia. They're jokes and I'll be Christ if I allow my subjects to languish under my reign. You're bright. You're young. Bright, young people go to school and get jobs. Once you established yourself over the next few decades, you'll truly understand what it is to be free."

The room filled with cool silence as Jessica chewed on that. Finally, she smiled with a bit of warmth. "When Sam said you wanted to see me, I half-thought you were going to kill me."

_Good lord, why?_ I wondered silently.

But she and Eric regarded each other knowingly. "We had our differences," he said. "And we would have killed each other to win Sookie. But I do not begrudge him in death. As for my feelings about your lineage, the sins of the father die with the man. I have a faint appreciation for you. What you do with my help and my advice will cement my partiality one way or the other."

I got hot around the ears, but I tried not to blush. I didn't like hearing about their dogfight over me. It reminded me of Eric's less civil ways in our early encounters. His crudeness and his competitive pursuit of me. And I certainly didn't like the thought of one of them killing the other to "win" me. Like I was blood-filled trophy or a medieval princess watching passively as my suitors clobbered each other with sticks in an arena. But I swallowed my distaste. After all, he_ had_ won. I _did_ Choose him.

For the first time, Jess seemed to notice I was there. "Do you miss him at all? Bill? I'm only askin' because he missed you terribly. Loved you more than anything in the world."

Eric stiffened, his hands gripping the keyboard and making the plastic creak warningly. I sent him love. Then I answered. "I hate that he's gone, Jess. I really do. But no, I don't miss him. He wasn't part of my life anymore, not after what happened. But I'm sad about it. I wish everything had gone down differently."

I dipped into Eric to see how he felt about my answer. He was tense. Maybe he thought I was holding back. Maybe I was. Just a little. I smiled at Jess. "I really hope we can be friends, though. I've always liked you."

She returned it. "Me too."

Eric picked up his phone and blasted out a text. I took the moment to stand up and circle the desk. I hugged Jess around the shoulders. The chill of her body caught me by surprise. I'd already forgotten what it felt like. She accepted it awkwardly, patting my arms, but avoiding eye contact.

She sniffed, wiping her eyes again. "So what now?"

Eric had no sooner set his phone down when Pam entered the room, a human boy in tow that couldn't have been older than the twenty-one year age requirement of the bar. She put her hands on her hips as she came to a halt by Jessica's chair, jutting her chin at the guy. "He volunteered."

Dressed in jeans and an LSU sweatshirt (speak of the devil), the guy smiled uncertainly at all of us. "This lady said there was a damsel in distress that needed help in here." He looked down at Jess, then at me as I resumed my seat by Eric. His eyes passed over me and went back to Jess. "It can't be her," he spoke of me. "You look like the saddest damsel I've ever seen."

I pushed myself into his mind and listened. _Never done this before Lady said she needed help Doubt they'll hurt me Blonde girl looks normal Three vampires in a locked room are you fuckin' crazy? It's fine, they asked they coulda just glamored me I'll be fine I wanna know Wanna help Girl's pretty under all that mess_

At least Pam hadn't taken him against his will. He was a little nervous, but actually wanted to be here, and not because of some Gothic fetish for the undead and for that I thanked Pam's momentary lack of tackiness. She'd managed to find a good Samaritan.

I put on my hostess face. Human to human, I made introductions. "This is Jessica. She's been under the weather lately and Tru Blood isn't helping much. Would you mind terribly if she fed from you? She won't hurt you and you'll be helping out a real sweet girl."

Jessica dropped her head in embarrassment. "Please, y'all. This isn't necessary, I'm fine."

"Silence." Eric sliced the room in half with his cold command. He drilled the young man with his glare. The boy squirmed a bit, but stayed upright and stared right back. I'd never met him before, but I was proud of him. Not all humans were sycophantic scaredy cats. I sat up straighter. We were every bit as noble.

To everyone's amazement, the boy reached down and touched Jessica's shoulder. When her eyes shot to his at the unexpected touch, he smiled wanly. "Are you a Christian, ma'am?"

"Born and raised."

"So was I. And you know that good deeds are our stock in trade. I was taught to share what I have with those in need. I ain't got much, not much but the blood in my veins. And wouldn't you know? A pretty girl could use some."

She looked up from under her eyelashes. "This ain't hardly the place for a nice Bible salesman like you. What are you doin' here?"

He chuckled, then astonishingly, pulled up a second chair to sit next to her. Obviously, he didn't realize Eric was a king, but still, he seemed to have forgotten the two much scarier vampires in the room as he kindly patted Jessica's knee. "Even Bible salesmen get curious. The Lord forgot to mention vampires in our book. Figured I'd come see for myself." He paused. "I'm Jimmy Ostergaard. I study chemistry. It's nice to meet you, Jessica."

He held out his hand. Jessica took it. His smiled widened. "You're cold."

She grinned back. "You're not."

They'd all but forgotten the three adults in the room. Finally, Eric spoke. "Pam, take them to your office. Give them privacy."

Jimmy tugged her hand jokingly. "Come on. Soup's on."

Eric gestured to the door. "Go with him. Feed carefully. You've been punishing yourself through starvation and you can get carried away. When you're done, return to Pam. She'll explain your new position to you."

Jessica nodded. "Thank you, sir. I promise I'll live up to your expectations."

"We'll see."

"Yes, you will."

As the two young people headed out, Pam lingered for a moment until they were in the hall. "Chief of Operations?" she asked with a slight sneer.

Eric shrugged. "Make something up."

She gave him the finger and slammed the door.

I reached for his hand under the desk now that we were alone. "That went well."

"I thought so."

The doorknob turned and Pam popped her head back in. So much for being alone. "By the way, you errand-inventing jerk, your cooch doctor is here."

She slammed the door again.

We looked at each other and I took a deep breath. "The interview with a vampire continues."


	43. Chapter 43

**A/N: As more and more people are voicing their discontent, I felt I had to weigh in. With my ignorance, that is. I have never read PAGE ONE of CH's SVM books. I found the show first, and by that time I'd read that the canons conflicted, so I decided I would read the novels once the show had completed and the two storylines didn't mess with my head. Now, after seeing how DEA is affecting my dear friends and Sookieverse fans, I feel like I've been saved from buying a first class ticket aboard the Hindenburg. **

**(SPOILER) As many have said, it's not that Sookie didn't end up with Eric. I could have handled that, if it -in turn- had been handled well. But it sounds like CH got drunk over a three-day weekend and pounded out some baffling drivel, then turned it into her publisher on Monday, then got belligerent when people expressed their criticisms. **

**As I say, I've never read them, so I feel like I'm taking a cheap shot here, but I trust my fellow fans, and I trust their ability to run a post-mortem on the whole series, and if they feel the story was murdered by vicious, multiple stabbings caused by CH's middle finger, then I believe them. **

**So I'll stick to True Blood. Not that AB has been any kinder than CH, in fact I hear that Sookie is going to have a fairy tryst in the upcoming season with some sandy-haired twit. Ew. But I'm hopeful that Bill turning into a saber-toothed psycho will bring Sookie and Eric together, if only for comfort. Jesus, I'll take anything at this point. **

**Until then, I live in fanfiction. Much love to the excellent writers who dwell there. **

**Eric's POV **

I was irritated.

I'll admit to that.

Our dealings with Jessica had been swift and uneventful, which was my preference. I meant what I said when I called her bright and tenacious. It was a highly desirable combination in our kind, and a rare one at that. I felt mostly indifference for the young vampire's fate, but I couldn't leave her to her own stewing, indigent devices. I was already beginning to view my kingdom as an up and coming neighborhood. If I spent any serious time on this double throne, I planned to turn the riffraff into highly-visible and respected contributors to our community. Any that preferred to stay trash would be treated accordingly; i.e. dropped in a nearby dumpster state, or burned. Their choice. That, and I had to lay down the law in a swift and brutal outline, should she actually be planning revenge on Hadley. As much as I disliked the silly Stackhouse girl, she was mine. And she was Sookie's. If Jessica or anyone thought they could muss one single hair on her head, I'd take theirs in its entirety for the insult.

Dumb bitch was _my_ dumb bitch, and she was trying to better herself on both of those fronts.

Also, I meant what I said in what little feeling I _did_ have for Jessica was favorable. If she worked hard and kept her nose clean, I felt I could even come to like her in the coming years.

Time would tell. It always did.

The damning mark against her (which wasn't her fault entirely) was when she asked Sookie about her feelings for Bill. I felt her send me assurances, but I also felt her hesitation in answering.

Did this mean she cared for him more than she was admitting to? I knew she was sad at his passing. I knew she felt betrayed by his actions. I knew she had loved him deeply, but with an emphasis on the past tense and with a serious taint because of his lies.

I had never asked myself if she'd ever actually stopped loving him.

She loved _me_. She wanted _me_. She belonged to _me_ and me only. I knew these things without a hint of conceit. They were simply true. And yet. This other possibility angered me more than it should have. I had everything Bill could have only wished for and more. I had Sookie and she had my child growing inside her. We'd Chosen each other in a bond unprecedented in the history of both our kinds. When she looked at me, she felt nothing but devotion.

I _knew_ these things. And yet...

Fucking Pam. Way to drag me back into the moment.

"...your cooch doctor is here," she clipped at me.

Sookie had me by the hand. Despite all of our time together, I still found any and all other company tiresome. I wanted to talk to her about Bill. No, I didn't. I didn't want to hear it. Yes, I did.

Fucking Light-bearing heart. I was a warrior, goddammit. I had never given two tepid shits about women's desires once I was done with them. Now I was this close to scribbling Sookie's name on my math book. Trembling with fear that she might like another boy better than she liked me. What the hell had happened to me?

I looked down at her tiny hand in mine. Ivory skin against bronze. I lifted it to my lips and kissed it.

"You're upset," she said quietly.

"For no good reason, lover. I promise you."

"Wanna talk about it?"

A sharp, single knock struck my door before it was opened without awaiting an answer.

_Later_, I projected. The doctor's diminutive shadow lurked in my doorframe and I nodded to her by means of an invitation.

Sookie nodded, and to my surprise, brought our joined hands to her own mouth, uncurled my fist, and kissed my fingertips. "Only you," she whispered knowingly. "Always."

She closed her eyes in concentration. I opened my mouth to reassure her I knew she loved me, but the words died in my throat. Sweet, searing voltage shot through her lips and into my arm. The Radia pulsed hotly in my chest, massaging my still heart with firm, startling strokes. I took a sharp breath, amazed at the tight, pleasant sensation. She'd figured out a way to crack open my ribcage and give my heart a handjob.

Could she Still my internal organs? Make them vibrate and quiver with happiness, like she did everything else?

I had no time to enjoy it, or even ask her about it.

Dr. Ludwig walked into the room, her odd, hunched pace reminding me of smaller mammals. Racoons. Possums. Fast for their size, but not fast by definition. She didn't wait for my invitation to sit, as usual. Fine with me. I was impatient for her news anyway.

Sookie's grip on my hand became steely. Her fingers turned hot and clammy in a flash.

"Northman," the doctor greeted shortly.

"What news?"

"What we all suspected. Miss Stackhouse is pregnant." She looked at my lover. "Congratulations."

She blinked rapidly before looking down at her own lap. "Thanks."

The old woman cocked her head. "I see you've come to accept it already. That's good." She looked at me. "You're still upholding our agreement from last time?"

"I already told you the child was safe with me. And_ from_ me. Did you glean anything remotely useful from your tests aside from a positive?"

The loose leather around her lips crinkled as she pursed her mouth. She pulled out a small blood vial from her pocket, shaking it slightly. "You've always been generous with your donations of your people's blood for my patients." She stopped, considering for a moment, then said, "Tell me, vampire, what would happen if I took this vial of _Sookie's_ blood and cracked it open on your dance floor?"

I felt my head slowly pull to one side as I regarded her and her question, which could be so easily miscontrued as a threat against my wife.

The smug look on her face told me that she already had a very good idea of what would happen if she chummed a vampire bar with that particular sample. It was on the tip of my tongue to lie to her, inform her that spilling blood, no matter whose, was always a stupid idea in a room filled with my kind. She was eyeing our held hands. Did she suspect correctly? Did she already know? I wanted to look at Sookie, to silently comb through her thoughts, but I resisted.

I was torn.

This crone was the only one I wanted to oversee Sookie's pregnancy. For several reasons. She understood our supernatural world, unlike any OBGYN we might pull from the phone book. She'd proven professional in the past. She was easily compensated. There was no one else who answered this description. But did I trust her? Did I have any choice? What if Sookie fell ill? Or there were complications? She was already too far along for it to be a normal forty-week cycle. Any number of things could go sideways and I would have no idea how to help her. I had about as much midwifing ability as Jason Stackhouse and a hell of a lot less of an excuse for that ignorance. Jason was thirty, stupid, and believed women's reproductive systems began and ended as jizz receptacles. I was elderly and brilliant, but useless nonetheless.

The doctor was waiting.

I gave her my most menacing glare as I graced her with a bullshit-free fact. "It would cause a frenzy the likes of which you've never seen."

Her expression smoothed, pleased at my honesty. She immediately pocketed the vial again and patted it reassuringly.

"How did you find out?"

"Blood doesn't lie," she replied.

"It doesn't do anything. It sat on a glass slide and coagulated. What specifically identified her?" We had yet to say the word 'fairy'. I suppose I was waiting for her to show her hand before I did.

She ignored the question and gestured to Sookie instead. "Stand up, Miss Stackhouse."

Sookie pulled her hand from mine and used it to tug her skirt down further over her knees. "Why?"

"There's no need to hide from me. I want to conduct another physical and I need you to stand up and remove your dress." She paused and decided to break our silent dance. "I've never seen a fairy pregnancy before and I'd like to see how you're progressing."

Sookie gave a startled little gulp, even though she knew this had been inevitable. I felt her mind swimming around the same certainty that we needed a doctor, our secret be damned. Still, this was the first human who figured it out. Who spoke of it openly. My instinct was to kill her. Silence her. My mate was in danger with every extra person who knew.

Sookie looked to me, feeling my indecision, then lifted her head high and made the decision for both of us. Without another word, she unzipped the side of her lovely pink dress, pulled it down to her hips, then shimmied out of it. She stepped out of the puddle of fabric, removing her shoes as she did so.

She stood next to me in her skimpy, cream-colored underwear set, nervously cupping the small, astonishing bump below her navel.

My fangs fell out of my gums. I wanted her. I ached at the very sight of her. She was so juicy and ripe; the animal in me wanted to kill the intruder sitting across from me before I drove my dick into my angel, anywhere I could fit. The lift of her eyes, so unsure of her own beauty, made it all the worse.

The doctor let out a very uncharacteristic breath of wonder. "Incredible," she rasped softly. "I just saw you over a week ago." She lifted out of her seat slightly, leaning forward as if to stand and reach for Sookie.

She jumped when I slapped the desk hard enough to crack the wood. "Answer me. How did you know?"

Pissed by my aggression, she stared at me with those steely, little button eyes before replying. "As I said. Her blood. Aside from it having no type, it behaved as all blood does... until I took it outside in the sunlight. Suddenly the red blood cells pulsed. The white blood cells flourished and multiplied. The hemoglobin turned redder. Healthier. Even though I'd taken it days before, her blood revitalized in the light. Not only did it reanimate. It danced."

"What the fuck possessed you to take it outside in the first place?" For a man who wanted help from this woman, I certainly liked throwing gasoline on our already tenuous bridge.

Luckily, she ignored my tone. "I consulted a text. A blood with no type is incredibly rare. So rare, in fact, that only one species exhibits it. Her blood seemed perfectly ordinary in my lab, so to confirm Miss Stackhouse was of Fae origin, I took my equipment outside and examined it again. If I'd had a maypole, her blood cells would have braided ribbon around it."

Sookie grew impatient standing in her underthings. As she reached behind me to pluck my leather coat from the back of my chair, she asked, "What kind of text? I didn't think any humans knew about fairies." She covered herself up, removing the impetus of my snarly attitude. I immediately felt calmer, her pregnancy once again concealed. My killer instincts resettled into cooler rationality.

"Galen wrote several books on the subject."

"The Roman physician?" My voice sounded far more civil.

"The vampire medical genius. I can't speak to him being Roman. He probably predated that time period. But yes, we're talking about the same person."

Now she had my attention. Vampire name-dropping was an amusing pasttime to us older alumni. Nearly every human of note in history has been purported to be a vampire, depending on the vampire telling the story and how it bolstered their own importance by association of that person. Galen, however, was a new one to me.

She saw my quizzical brow. "He had a brilliant mind for anatomy. No doubt because of his visceral explorations of his victims. He simply took the trouble to write them down. But he was also a member for a very elite community. Galen, more than simply a vampire, was a Custos."

Correction, _now_ she had my attention.

"A knowledge custodian, ordained by the fabled Keep." I had heard this particular story. From a time immemorial even when I was human, there had been tales of a group of supernatural creatures, tired of constant and never-ending wars between their peoples, uniting under the pledge to live more peaceably alongside each other. Accounts varied on how successful they were, and over time their agreement fell into myth and our peoples went back to beating the shit out of each other, but what they did manage to accomplish was our collective concealement from humans.

Many of the species brethren were now extinct: Aatxe, kijos, adaros, mandis, korrigans, minotaurs, rongs. Some were simply too big, like the latter two, and seemed monsterous to humans. Bull-men and giant Vietnamese dragons were easy enough to find and kill by panicked villagers convinced of the creatures' malevolence. The rest of us - vampires, weres, demons, Fae, maenads, demigods, sprites, ghosts - were faster, smaller, unvisible, humanoid, or just plain luckier.

As the Keep's numbers thinned and precious histories and information became lost, the need for archivists emerged.

The Custos, as lengend went, were chosen from among the Keep. They answered to three descriptions: vampire, demon, fairy. Shifters and weres were excluded, but for practical reasons. Those chosen were not thought to be superior. They were simply immortal. Their job was to learn. To learn and to record the magical histories and discoveries as and when they happened. A Custos was chosen for every major category of achievement. War. Art. Philosophy. Literature. Mathematics.

And apparently, medicine.

Of course, most people thought the whole story was about as factual as unicorn shit.

"You are privy to the teachings of a Custos," I surmised gently. "That is no small thing."

"I can hear your skepticism. But it's true. Galen chronicled the physiology of any creature he could get his hands on. According to the Caduceus text, Galen noted that when he left fairy blood out in the daytime before he died, the blood seemed even livelier when he examined it at dusk. It had spent all day percolating in the sun. His vampiric gifts included microscopic eyesight. He literally could see its joy."

She looked back at Sookie, her expression almost soft. "His description was perfect."

Sookie actually smiled at her. "Sounds pretty."

"It was."

It is.

I leaned forward slowly. "And if I wanted to see this Caduceus text for myself?"

"Sure," she drew out condescendingly. "All you have to do is go to medical school, get your degree, then take the Hippocratic Oath. The text is nothing but a book of blank pages until the reader makes an unbreakable vow to do no harm." She looked at me blandly. "Planning to swear off killing, Nurse Nightingale?"

"I couldn't make that promise hold for a month."

"The spell protecting the book's secrets knows that. All the Custos texts are bound this way. I can't read the others pertaining to art and music, etc. I wouldn't even know where to find them. But it wouldn't matter if I bought the whole set at a flea market for ten bucks. The contents would never reveal itself and I'd be stuck with an empty bunch of shelf hogs."

Interesting.

We were silent for a moment.

Sookie modestly dropped her eyes as she slid out of my coat, baring herself to us once again. "Where do you want me?"

The doctor gestured to the side of her chair. Sookie walked to her, trying to keep her body relaxed as Ludwig raised her hands to the precious little bump. Sookie hestitated, then let her touch it. I stiffened, watching the interaction with even more vigilance than her first examination. The doctor might have been awed by our miracle, but her hands were all business, placing soft, exploratory fingers across the expanse of her belly in a task they had performed a thousand times.

"Any morning sickness?"

"None."

"Cravings? Bloated feelings? Lethargy?"

"No, ma'am."

"Have you felt any fluttering movements? Like fish in a pond?" she asked.

Sookie shood her head. "I don't think so."

"They'll come soon enough. The fetus' formation is already pronounced. Arms," she used her middle finger to rub a small spot in her pelvis. "Head. Legs. Abdomen. She's impossibly advanced for a one-month human gestation. I'm quite pleased. I would have been concerned if your bloodwork was conclusively fairy, but your pregnancy was not."

Sookie gave a small puff of incredulity. "She?"

The doctor waved her hand. "Pick your pronoun. I detest using 'it' when examining an undetermined baby, and 'he' is overused. The sex can't be known until an ultrasound is administered." She looked up from her ministrations. "Would you like to have one?"

Sookie, in turn, looked to me. "Uh... sweetie? Would we like to have one?"

I stared at them blankly.

She. _A girl._

If it were possible, an even larger wave of protectiveness surged up in me. A little Sookie, two angels stacked inside each other like precious nesting dolls. I was well and truly fucked. If it was a girl and she had her mother's eyes, I would surely die of an exploded heart. What would I do with a girl child? Abdicate my throne and conduct all essential business around playing with plastic dolls and building her a little, wooden house to put them in, that's what. I could show her how to braid their hair. Teach her how to fish on a riverbank while Sookie laid out a picnic in the grass... in the daytime. I would devote every waking hour to her. And when she turned thirteen, she would forgive me when I locked her away for the rest of her life, unwilling to let any boy into her life and steal her love away from me.

The women were watching me.

"Yes," was all I allowed myself to say.

Ludwig gave her a few more prods before seeming satisfied. She took out a pad of paper from inside her bag and began scribbling notes.

My phone beeped from my coat pocket with a text. I ignored it.

"No," I said.

Ludwig looked up.

"No notes. Destroy that page. Anything you need to remember, either commit to memory or simply tell me. I cannot forget. There will be no record of this pregnancy anywhere."

She huffed. "I have to document this. I can't commit a fairy pregnancy to memory. There are too many variables. I need notes for reference."

"Too bad. Remember what you need, or write it down now and give it to me. I'll memorize it, then burn the pages."

She made a noise of displeasure. "Is this about saving face? Yours isn't the first companion to have another man's child, Northman. I'll make no mention of faires, and my files are well guarded at my office. Since we're dealing with a human-fairy conception, people are going to see that she's pregnant in a matter of days. You won't be able to hide it."

Of course. She was still under the impression that Sookie had mated with a human. It hadn't seemed prudent to correct her at the time. Now, it felt unwise to let her attend Sookie without every single fact. There might have never been a union like ours, but someone with access to a Custos text might be able to anticipate problems I had yet to think of.

One cat was already out of the bag. Might as well inform her about the pride of lions coming out behind it.

"Sookie has never been with a human man, doctor. The child is mine." I grit my teeth and plunged. "Biologically mine."


	44. Chapter 44

**A/N: Well, the first episode leaves me cautiously optimistic. Sookie stabbed Bill to save Eric. Eric behaves like a real sweetheart. Nora surmises that Eric is in love with her and he doesn't correct her. Other than being annoyed with Sookie for revoking his invitation for the stupid, hopeless and oft-repeated wish to be normal, I was quite pleased. I mean, seriously, how often are the writers going to fall back on that old standby in order to create tension between them? Sookie declares she wants to be left alone to live a bullshit-free life, but then hangs out with fairies and asks for werewolf help when it suits? And what happens when Warlow or Bill or whoever inevitably attacks her in her own home, and Eric is helpless to save her unless she's able to throw out another invite first? Whatev. 'm gettin' sick of her fickle attitude. Actually, 'm gettin' sick of writers not coming up with better dialogue and more plausible plot. **

**Like when Eric voices his shock that she staked Bill to save him. Instead of kindly pointing out that she loved Eric very much (which they've both freely admitted) and would always be there for him, she just agrees that it's crazy that she lifted a finger (basically). Can't we have that ONE moment? The moment where Sookie throws him a freakin' bone? If you go back and watch the show from the moment they confess their love, you'll notice Sookie NEVER has a kind word (or even a kind look) for him ever again. She's always happier to see someone else: Jason in the fairy field, Tara at her house, Bill at the Authority. She always looks mildly pissed off, then moans about having to help him find Russell, or wanting her house back, or hearing that Bill's gone batshit. And then that LOOK he gave in this ep, when she said his name after he signed the deed! OMG! Like a lovesick puppy. It felt so hopeful! But no. Get outta my house. Shut down. Fuckin' fail.  
**

**Sorry, I don't mean to rant (again). I simply fail to see why she can't be written a little nicer. Or logical. Or even just fucking consistent. **

**Sookie's POV**

I froze.

Eric looked at the two of us calmly as he blew one of our bigger secrets right there in front of Ludwig, the extra liquor cases, and his shabby pieces of assorted furniture.

Without thinking, my hands shot to my stomach, shielding Mo from the monsters that heard his declaration and were going to come bashing through the walls to destroy him like so much sinister Kool Aid.

The doctor looked at Eric for a very long time before she said, "I didn't know you were funny."

"You need to get over your incredulity and just factor it into your examination. You also need to reread your Galen texts for any information pertaining to hybrid children. He will be one quarter human, one quarter fairy, and half vampire. I want to know what that will mean for Sookie's pregnancy, for his delivery, and for his life afterward." Eric spoke ahelluva lot smoother than either of us felt.

I gripped my stomach tighter as Ludwig's hands dropped away from me and she turned to face Eric fully.

"There's nothing to check. Vampires don't breed." Her eyes flickered to me nervously. "I'm not here to get your companion into trouble, but you've been misinformed if you believe you're capable of normal procreation."

From my stance above her, I could almost feel the doctor's fear that she was exposing a lie that I'd fed to Eric to shield myself from his wrath at my supposed infidelity. It was kind of her to worry, but Eric was right. We simply didn't have time to ease her into this. I dropped to one knee at her side and put a daughterly arm around her shoulder. Being this close, I could smell the sterility of her lab in her coat, punctuated by the occasional, guilty cigarette in her skin.

"Ma'am, it's true. My fairy kin have already confirmed it. This baby is Eric's, as much as they hate to admit it. Surely Galen mentioned something about fairy physiology?" I had no idea who these Custos of the Keep people were that these two seemed so familiar with, but I could follow the plot easily enough. I'd have to ask Eric about them later, though.

The old woman nodded. Good.

"And did he note that fairies Chose each other when they mated? Exchanged their Light?"

She expressed surprise. "Yes. Just like swans. Mating for life, flying everywhere together, buying little swan groceries."

I gave a small chuckle, then pressed. "Yeah, and I've Chosen Eric. He may not have the Light to Choose me back, but I've bonded to him in blood. In the eyes of our two people, I'm his and he's mine. My Light inside him has made this baby possible. I understand your thinkin' that I'm pullin' the wool over his eyes, but I'm not. I can't. The blood bond would tell him if I was lying. For whatever reason, our union has caused this pregnancy. Real as the nose on your face."

She hadn't responded to my arm around her, so I retracted it slowly. As I sat back on my haunches, I watched her carefully process what I'd said. Her train of thought was so clear, I didn't even have to listen to her mind to know her thoughts. She didn't believe us. Wait, maybe she did. No, she didn't. What I'd just said was insane. But maybe it was possible. Her books spoke of equally weird occurrences. She needed to think. She needed more information. No, she didn't want any. Eric and I were nuts and she should just collect her fee and get the hell out of here before our strand of crazy went viral. But she was a scientist. She need to know. She needed time. She needed...

"I want a sperm sample, Northman," she spoke aloud.

"N-,"

"Sure," I cut Eric off. "We'll have it for you at the ultrasound appointment."

"His blood, too. And I want your family history records, Miss Stackhouse. I want everything you know about your tie to your king. I want to visit you on a daily basis to access your progress. This is going to move faster than any of us can predict. I won't keep notes. I'll reexamine Galen's work for any information that might help explain this. And I also want the name of the fairy who insists this baby is his," she jabbed her thumb at Eric.

Each demand worried me. So much was being laid bare. I looked at Eric, silently asking if her demands were acceptable.

He looked forbidding, coiled tightly behind his desk, getting angrier with each passing second. She was asking a lot, but what she wanted was fair. If we insisted on playing music, the woman was gonna dance. Plus, as nervous as this whole conversation made me, I was glad she was so insisting. I was glad she could think on her feet and wanted as much information as possible. We wanted the same thing. All three of us wanted this to turn out okay. Hopefully.

Eric slithered out of his strike posture and leaned in to make his anger very clear. "You can have these things. You _will_ be glamored to forget this entire conversation, and will only remember it again when you see us. And you'll swear to me that you'll protect our secret, glamor be damned. Mention this to a soul and-,"

"You'll kill my grandbabies, yeah yeah. I remember, you sadistic asshole. I swear to protect Sookie, just as I do all of my patients. As part of your glamor, you'll also instruct me to remember every last detail en lieu of a file. Now what is the fairy's name?"

"What do you want with her?"

"Is she family?"

"The one who initially noticed Sookie's pregnancy, yes. Sookie's fairy godmother. She said she could see his Light." Eric paused. I felt him hesitating on how much to tell her about Mo's "specialness". After looking at the doctor and seeing her righteous glare, he continued carefully. "She...consulted her library. And spoke with her queen. They confirmed it." Another hesitation. "Afterwards, I could smell the truth of their words."

Her spindly brow arched. "The child smells like you?"

"He doesn't smell_ like_ me. His smell is a very private and precious memory _of_ mine. That and Sookie swore she's been with no one else. That settles it."

She gave me a skeptical look. "Weren't you Compton's before?"

A scrunched my nose. "Last year, yeah. But I haven't been with him since. Only Eric."

"Name."

I sighed in resignation. "Claudine."

She gave no sign that the name meant anything to her.

"Why is Claudine important to you? Are you going to talk to her? Is that even possible?" I asked.

She didn't answer. Instead, she cast a glance at my chest. "You may dress now."

I'd felt Eric's anxiety at my belly on display and I'd shared it. I was more than happy to retrieve my dress and hide it once again. As I slid back into my clothes and stepped into my shoes, I listened to the woman's thoughts.

_...Can it be possible? A vampire-fairy child Absolutely ridiculous Possible No Maybe Must consult the books again Go to the vault and read about it What about Claudine? Two of them in one conversation? It can't be a coincidence Galen wouldn't have known Medical expert Claudine would know How do I find her? Fairies don't answer to our medical community I have to try to contact them Claudine? The same Claudine? How many can there be? The Stackhouse girl knows her Cannot be a coincidence..._

I listened for a few seconds more, pausing as I fixed my hair. I heard her final thoughts on Claudine before she looked right at me, then pointedly began thinking about an old love song that she knew well enough to replay without including her own mental voice. The voice of the singer, complete with instrumental backup, took up the whole of her mind.

_Hold me! Hold me! Never let me go until you've told me, told me, what I want to know and then just hold me. Hold me..._

Clearly, her Galen texts had taught her a thing or two about fairy mind reading.

I smiled innocently at her. I already got what I was after anyway.

Eric was checking his phone. I remembered it had beeped earlier.

The doctor stood, grabbing her bag from the back of the chair. "Tomorrow afternoon. Two o'clock. Come to my practice and we'll perform the ultrasound. Remember to bring his blood and semen samples."

Eric growled quietly. I shared the sentiment. I put my hands on my hips. "Any special reason the two of us can't come to you tomorrow night?"

"My regular office is housed in a day clinic. There are no after hours. Security is tight and I won't risk smuggling a vampire and fairy into the ultrasound room at midnight. A single mother in broad daylight is a dime a dozen. No one will think twice about your presence. I'll forge the appropriate paperwork. Your names and information will never be used. Are we clear?"

She bent forward, snatching an envelope out of Eric's stack of correspondance, and flipped it over. She grabbed a pen and scribbled quickly on the back. "The address. You have my number. Two o'clock. Don't be late."

Eric leaned into her bend and quickly glamored her, insisting she remember all the details, then erasing it all until she saw me the next day. He dismissed her.

She tossed the envelope back onto the pile and without a second glance, walked out.

Eric stared thoughtfully at the information she'd inconsiderately written all over a letter addressed to "His Majesty/Current Resident" at Fangtasia. I assumed it was yet another tongue-in-cheek congratulations from another colleague. One with a decent sense of humor. I picked up the letter, glanced at the doctor's address on the back, memorized it, then put it back where it lay.

His gaze didn't waver.

"So," I said softly. "Who texted you?"

Silence.

I waited another second or two before repeating my question.

He didn't seem to hear me right away, only blinking suddenly and looking up after another few moments had passed.

"Do you still love Bill?"

It was my turn to blink quickly. "Huh?"

"Bill. You told Jessica you didn't miss him. But do you still harbor feelings for him?"

I didn't even think. "No."

"He was your first."

"Everybody's got one. He was mine. I've told you before that I wished it'd been you and I meant it. I don't harbor feelings for Bill anymore than I do for my first cat, Tina. I think of them both fondly from time to time. I wish they hadn't died. I loved them, but I moved on. Tina and Bill are gone. I have you and Kitty Eric now."

A burst of panic hit me. "Kitty Eric! Oh, my God! I completely forgot about him and he's been at your house for ten whole days!"

With scary speed, I launched myself at Eric's car keys on top of his desk. Poor kitty Eric! God, I was such a selfish bitch! My poor kitty was all alone and probably starving in that mansion! I had to get to the house and put out some food, if he was even strong enough to eat. I ached, remembering how he'd looked when I'd picked him out of the line-up at the pound. He'd been too skinny, his fur too matted, and his canine teeth protruding from his overbite in an eerily familiar heart shape. That had sealed it. He was meant to be mine.

Now, his horrible owner had probably killed him with her lack of pet responsibility.

The keys were inches away from my hand on the corner, then they were gone, clenched in Eric's fist as he stopped me from grabbing them.

"I gotta git home!"

He held a single finger up, shushing me. "Your animal is fine. Pam went looking for us at my house when we were gone. She captured him and dropped him off at Hadley's new home. She assumed I wouldn't want him stinking up our home with shit and eventually a carcass."

My heart was pounding. "Hadley's got him? She hadn't told me in her texts."

"I can only assume she was more worried about your disappearence and screwing her guard then mentioning she had your pet." He smiled. "Herveaux said that the boy enjoys him. Apparently he is not allowed pets at his father's."

Still shaking with adrenaline, I sank into the doctor's now vacant seat. "Hunter? He's been over to the house you bought for Hadley?"

"Under state supervision and under the wolf's watchful eye, but yes. Twice."

I closed my eyes. "That's so wonderful."

"She's doing well, according to his reports. I read three of them while you dressed. Herveaux states the supervisor is impressed with her progress. That longer, weekend visits might soon follow."

"God bless you and that sweet, furry man."

"Our intervention is selfish, I assure you. A man would run through hell and back for the love of a Stackhouse woman."

"That's a new development, make no mistake."

I tapped our bond before I spoke again. "You don't really think I'm carrying a torch for Bill, do you? After all we've shared? After everything you feel in me?"

I wasn't as angry as I could have been. I understood that jealousy was a psychotic bitch and ate every rational argument that your significant other was loving and faithful. I guess I was more surprised than anything. Knowing that she'd gotten under Eric's skin was incredible, if not comforting. That he was human(ish) after all.

Our bond strained slightly, the rope twisting as his mind tugged mine closer, his insecurity plucking at me. It broke my heart. He needed me so much. Without thinking, I gently lifted my right hand and sent a burst of Light flying across the desk. Our vampiric bond was in distress. Our fairy bond came to the rescue.

My Light hit him square in the chest. He was thrown back fully into his chair, gasping loudly as it connected to my Radia. Love, tenderness, loyalty, devotion, all detonated deep in his body. His eyes rounded with shock, then slammed shut as he endured the ride.

I don't think either of us would ever get over when that happened.

As his rigid muscles slowly softened and his reflexive breathing stopped, he bared his human teeth at me. My teddybear was grateful.

"Thank you," he rasped.

"Don't mention it."

"I'll never get used to being fucked by the sun."

"I'll never get tired of watching it."

We sat quietly for a bit, letting our renewed vigor settle back down.

When he spoke, the grit hadn't left his voice. "The text was from Pam. She says I have a visitor in the bar."

I shot to my feet. "Massawa?" Oh, Christ.

"No," he sent calm. "She would have named him and not made him wait. It's someone else."

"Oh," I smoothed my crazy-pink dress. "Then I guess we should go receive then, huh?"

"Yes," he sighed wistfully. "Though I'd rather reciprocate your sunburst."

I giggled, tugging the bodice lower, making sure my bump didn't show. "Wow. A man prefers sex to working. Excuse me while I faint."

He smirked, then rose slowly, making a show of just how long it took for his frame to become upright. "Shall I catch you?"

"Shoo, fly," I flapped my hands at his offer. "You said we needed to put in an appearance on the throne anyway. Now offer me your arm like a gentleman and let's get this over with."

He grinned outright and zipped to my side, whipping me up in his arms and kissing me soundly. "Sexy little fire angel," he muttered into my mouth. "So fuckable in pink. My child in you drives me fucking crazy."

I smiled against his mouth. "So what do you think about a baby girl?"

"How the fuck will I survive so much beauty? She'll own me even more than you do."

"Ha!" I chortled. "No way, buddy. You're mine. Daddy's little princess can take a damn number."

He lifted and rubbed our fronts together. His belt buckle snagged the fabric of my dress as he massaged himself with my bump. "Fuck, yes," he whispered. "Yours. Hers. Or his. All of you have all of me."

I laughed again, slapping at him. "Turn me loose and let's git. I wanna see who's been waiting on you for the last twenty minutes."

He grumbled, but complied, setting me gently on my feet. "I want Alcide to go with you tomorrow, by the way. I swear that cunt is being obtuse on purpose, keeping me from you when you see our child for the first time."

I checked my dress for obvious tears and found none. "I don't think so. She was imagining the cameras and shared computer usage that sends all information to the mainframe. The minute she performs the ultrasound, the machine will send the images to an HMO. She's trying to make it look as normal as possible. A midnight medical caper would stick out. A lot. Trust me," I patted his arm, "She's hiding something for more interesting."

I made for the door, he stopped me. "That being?"

I gave him a pert look over my shoulder and I continued to walk without him. "You're gonna love this."

"Get to the cum shot."

"Claudine," I whispered in a conspiratorial tone, "is a goddamn Custos."

He led me to the throne. Our bond buzzed with the mutual insistence that we get Claudine on the horn pronto, the minute we were home. Just as I suspected, every last woman in the room brain fucked my man and hated every last strand of my DNA. Also, they couldn't believe I didn't understand Eric well enough to know he'd find my wardrobe glaringly inapproriate and pitifully naive. What else could he expect, fucking a honkey mud farmer's daughter like me?

I blocked them out, smiling gratefully as he made a show of seating me first, kissing my knuckles a second too long, before throwing himself into his chair and sprawling out.

Our visitor came forward through the throng of emo patrons, dressed to kill.

With laughter.

Pam handed Eric a note as a singing telegram girl, dressed as Tinkerbell, gave a saucy little dance while warbling the old song _Mother-In-Law_. The audience was aghast at her audacity, shaking her sparkly ass at us and tossing silver glitter on the first five rows of black leather.

I peeked at the note in Eric's large hand.

_I hope you gave Mab my regards._

_-Magister Okalo Massawa_

Fatal, powerful vampire boss he may be, but you had to like his style.


	45. Chapter 45

**A/N: I have three people I'd like to address here. **

**I've been alerted to the fact that another TB author is lifting some of my work. I know we're all playing with CH and AB's ideas here, but please refrain from using my exact words. Thank you! **

**And while 99.9% of my reviews are kind, witty, hilarious and wholeheartedly supportive, I'd like to ask one particular reviewer (who doesn't log on and hence I cannot PM) to stop the impatient, demanding and borderline hostile remarks. I write when I can. I would write every day, if I could. But I have a job, two babies, and a real life full of the dreary crap that we all face day-to-day. Do not nag at me, please. Do not demand that I write longer, better chapters and then threaten to stop reading if I don't. You're welcome to stop any time. This story has been a WIP for two years now, so perhaps you should come back to it when it's finished. **

******And finally, to a good reviewer buddy of mine, who told me to "take down my avatar because she was sicka looking at Sookie", I send a giggling thanks. My avatar isn't Anna Paquin. It's me! Ficlit! Thanks for making my week, thinking I could pass for the barmaid who ensnared Alex Skarsgard (sorta). A girl can dream. **

******Hey, can someone explain to me this After Dead book? WTH? Sookie's HEA gets a footnote in an addendum? Has anyone read it? Diga me, yo. **

**And in an unprecedented move, I'm doing two Sookie POVs in a row. This next part just didn't fit with Eric, so I gotsta go where Musey takes me. **

**Sookie's POV**

I lied to him.

I felt really bad about it, but I lied to him.

As Alcide drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as we sat at a red light the next day, I couldn't help but stare down at my lap, feeling guilty. I was wearing a very loose tank top and black track suit. Eric had handed it to me out of a box in the closet. It was for a woman, so I just assumed it was Pam's. It looked completely out of character for me, but it was the only thing Eric had lying around that a) fit me and b) hid Mo. I needed to hit a maternity store. Once we got to our destination and Alcide cottoned onto our little secret, I might as well throw a shopping spree on top of it. He wasn't exactly an ideal candidate for shopping for elasticated jeans and nursing bras, but if I didn't get some soon, I was going to have to cut arm holes into potato sacks.

I sighed. So many secrets.

He cast me a sideways glance as the light turned green and he stepped on the gas. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah. Fine."

"Any particular reason why you need to visit this particular health food store? In the daytime? I checked and they've got evening hours. Unless his highness is beneath escorting you to buy organic water, or whatever. I'm sure they deliver, too."

I _had_ to tell him the truth. We'd be there any minute and he'd see that I wasn't after cage-free eggs and locally-sourced okra like I'd fibbed I was. Yeah, yeah. I know, I know. Didn't mean I couldn't bitch out a little. I stuck out my tongue. "Maybe I just miss my friend. Ever thinka that, smart ass?"

He smiled good-naturedly. "I miss you, too. So why can't we go out for burgers instead of freeze-dried lentils?"

"Or maybe you're just chomping at the bit to get back to your 'other' job. Your back must be broken, bending around Hadley's little finger the way you do."

"Hey!" he pointed a finger at me. "Dontchu go draggin' her into this. She's a doll."

"A sex doll, maybe."

"_Aw, hell,_" He shielded his eyes from me with the fan of his fingers. Like that was gonna keep me out.

I laughed. "Don't be a prude. There's nuthin' in your head I haven't seen, and worse."

"Shit, you're not _looking_ at it, are ya? Please tell me you ain't."

I made a noncommittal noise. "Eh."

Maybe I bitched out a lot.

Despite my teasing, I was stupid-happy for both of them. Neither had said as much to me, but their working and living arrangements had become so entangled, and the way they acted together in public, practically shouted that they were now romantically involved. I enjoyed making both of them squirm with the suggestion that I'd intercepted the information from their heads, but the truth was that I didn't need to. They were about as subtle a lush uncle at the Christmas table. That, and Eric pointedly sniffed the air every time Alcide came near him, making damn sure he saw him do it, just to amuse himself as the sweet man blushed and shuffled and scoured the floor with embarrassed eyes. I guess he reeked of hot monkey sex.

Eric and I were such sadists.

I settled back into the seat of his truck and closed my eyes. We still had about fifteen minutes before we got to Ludwig's clinic. I thought back to earlier that morning. After we got home, I'd gone upstairs to shower and change while Eric did his usual: prowling the perimeter, searching for unwelcome guests, checking his security measures, and other alpha male stuff that convinced him that his home and family were safe.

I'd dug out Gran's old tailor ruler from my purse. It was so old and had been used to often that the numbers over the inch marks were nearly worn away. I'm not sure why I kept it with me, maybe I just liked having a little piece of her with me, but regardless, it was useful now.

Standing in just my panties, I slid the limp tape around my breasts first. I'd always been a solid thirty-four incher. Not too busty, but not flat, either. As I lined the tape up along my back and across my nipples, the battered numbers informed me that I was now the proud owner of three extra inches. That put me at a modest D cup.

I looked at my girls in wonder. They were noticeably fuller. And despite my lack of a bra, they stood high and perky. I cupped them experimentally, equally surprised at how tight and supple they felt in my hands. I squeezed gently. The sensation made them stiffen and ache. They knew I wasn't Eric. They were getting pissy that their master wasn't the source of the attention.

I left them alone and slid the measuring tape to the even _larger_ bump underneath them.

I traced it with my fingers. Already, it was bigger than one day ago. Before all this, I'd been a healthy size six and perfectly content with it. I lined the tape up once again and flipped it up, numbers facing me.

Thirty inches.

Wow.

I let out a low whistle as I took in my new measurements. I knew they wouldn't stay that small for long. At this rate, I was going to give birth in a couple of weeks. The thought immediately made my heart skip a beat. With all the talk about boys and girls, scions and hybrids, impossibilities versus what was literally right before my eyes, I hadn't even given one single thought about the fact that I didn't own a crib. Or a stroller. Or diapers. Or onesies. Or tiny little booties to put on his tiny little feet. My baby was going to come into this world naked...and stay that way unless I got my ass in gear and bought him some essentials.

My baby...

Oh, my word.

I swallowed carefully. It could be done in an hour. I knew that. Eric and Pam would explode in a tizzy of credit card numbers, online catalogues and next day UPS. One of his many, many bedrooms would be converted no sooner than my pointing a finger at my choice and saying simply, "That one." It would go from elegant to Elmo like _that_.

I _knew_ that.

I still couldn't help feeling completely overwhelmed.

I stared at the tape, trying not to hyperventilate and wondering vaguely if I stood there long enough, if the number would bump up to thirty-one while I was watching it.

I closed my eyes and took slow, careful breaths.

I didn't even know he was there until I heard him exhale a small puff of air.

I startled, my head jerking up, my eyes opening wide.

Eric stood in the doorway.

His shirt was already on the floor, his pale chest bunched up tightly as he stared at me with bellicose, lustful eyes. I was used to seeing it, but damned if it didn't get my heart fluttering just the same.

He was already straining against his zipper, growing even bigger as he watched me. My fingers curled around the tape. Aside from my panties, it was the only thing I was wearing.

"Hi," I whispered.

He didn't answer. Instead, he inhaled sharply, sniffing me out. I gasped softly. I was gonna ask him what had him so hot under the collar, but that seemed silly given that I already knew.

I let the tape fall to the floor. I just stood and let him look at me. Look at what he'd done to me.

We stared at each other with ten feet of floor between us.

With everything running through my mind, I honestly couldn't think anything to say.

I felt his blood tingle in my veins, buzzing happily at his closeness. I felt my Radia acknowledge my presence by throbbing hotly from its proxy in my man. I saw his pectorals twitch at the sensation. I saw his pupils darken as he wrestled against the paradox of two masters and two slaves in the room, twisting our twin bonds into a Mobius that never began or ended, and yet never covered the same ground twice.

And then... a tiny foot kicked inside my belly.

I let out a squeak of surprise, my hand curving around the spot.

Eric's head went up. His eyes went almost black. Then he was on his knees in front of me, batting my hand away and pressing his forehead reverently into the spot where our tiny baby had just struck.

"I heard that," he whispered in awe.

He rubbed his head back and forth, alternating between his ear and his nose pressed against my bump. He listened. He scented. Then he tilted upwards letting his lips brush against the undersides of my _very_ tight breasts. His eyes rolled up and closed.

"I..." I stuttered, watching in pure amazement.

He looked completely blissed out again, like he had in the Fae world. He'd surrendered his sight in return for experiencing our child purely through scent and touch. I wondered offhandedly if there'd ever been a blind vampire before. If a sightless person had ever been turned. If their sight remained lost, or if they regained it in a flurry of super-healing. What kind of hyper-senses would they have had without their eyes? Hearing the ocean waves in Topeka? Reading books with their fingertips?

I cupped his throat in my palms. For all my fears, I felt a little less lost with the king of Louisiana and Mississippi kneeling at my feet, ready for my command to defend or snuggle. "We need diapers."

"Finally. A request. They'll be riveted with Mo's birthstone."

"I mean it. We don't have anything. Gran gave all of mine and Jason's baby stuff to goodwill. She said it was a sin to keep useful things boxed up in the attic when other families needed them."

"She was wise. And I don't need to tell you that our baby will never want for anything. He'll be clothed and fed and happy for the eternity that he lives with us."

"You really think he'll be unkillable like the tome says? And immortal...like us?"

He'd been sliding his tongue between my stomach and my tits. He opened his eyes... and his mouth, just to show me a tiny hint of fang. "No one will ever get close enough to test the theory."

"You can't protect him from life, baby. That theory will be put to the test the minute we put him in a car seat. Or a bathtub. Or in his crib at night. You don't need a deranged killer bent on stopping the Coming in order to die."

Another centimetre of fang met my observation. "And yet, the fact remains. He will live. Forever."

I smiled at his stubborn certainty. "I'm getting you coffee mug. Anyone sitting across from you will know you're the WORLD'S BEST DAD."

He gave me a lazy smirk. "And this little one," he tapped my swelling belly, "will wear my onesie. So everyone will know that his MOM'S A SUPERHERO."

I grinned, sliding my hands deep into his gelled hair. I broke its hold and the strands worked their way out into a tussled, softer style. Our bond grew woolly with his rough-soft pleasure at being petted.

"I've called Herveaux. He'll pick you up tomorrow to take you to Ludwig."

I nodded, giggling suddenly.

His brow went up in question.

I leaned down and kissed the heart shape just behind his lips. "Ready for your physical now?"

"My what?"

"Your phyyysicaaal," I sing-songed playfully. "The doctor's orders. I need a blood sample," I fingered my dagger pendant, "...and a semen sample. I know how much you hate giving them to me, but if it makes you feel better, it's for science." I pushed at him until we tumbled gently to the floor together. His hands trapped protectively around my middle as I laid on top of him, squirming and wriggling against his hard-on. He was glaring at me while trying not to smile.

"Why can't I say no to you?"

"Cuz you secretly like being bossed around."

He looked genuinely rankled. "I never did before."

I softened my teasing tone and snuggled deeper into his hands. "Or maybe you just like a challenge. You've been irresistible to everyone for so long, you'd forgotten how to argue against someone you couldn't just glamor or kill."

"So now you're suggesting I've become _lazy_?" he chuckled, tucking me close before rolling us over and laying me carefully on the floor beneath him.

"_Atrophied_. If the world were made of tin cans, how would you ever know how strong you were when they crush so easily?"

"Simple," he said. "Crush several cans, then pile them together and try to crush the stack."

"Jerk," I laughed. "You know what I mean."

He smiled kindly, tracing my face, choosing silence.

I let him, happily running my hands over his arms and shoulders, delighting in the warmth I'd given him.

"I wish you were coming with me tomorrow," I sighed wistfully.

He merely nodded, watching his index finger stroke my cheekbone. It slid further, down under my chin, against my pulse, circling my breast. I arched slightly.

He shook his head slowly. "How can you possibly be prettier than you already were?"

My nerves sang where he touched me, while the neglected ones tried to crowd into the small trail he left behind. My hands turned possessive, squeezing his arms impatiently. My panties were drenched, growing wetter as I squirmed under his stare.

"Such a man," I joked, trying to lighten the dark, hungry mood. "Give me bigger boobs and I can rock his world," I paraphrased.

He ignored me, fixated on his finger. He drew a line between my nipples, watching them pearl with pleasure. Then he lifted himself slightly, sliding the single digit along until he reached the sumit of my bellybutton. The tight skin broke out in goosebumps.

"Beautiful Sookie," he murmured to it. "You needn't worry. I'll drown you in blood and semen long before this afternoon."

I shuddered, my body vibrating with anticipation. I sent a prayer to the universe that I kept enough of my wits to remember to collect some of his offering for the doctor, and not greedily lock it away in my body.

"Come on," I coaxed, pulling my dagger loose from its sheath and pawing at his fly. "Open your pants and say '_aaaaaah_'."

And that's how I ended up in Alcide's truck the next day, feeding him some crap about needing groceries with two vials of bodily fluid in my purse.

As we approached the next intersection, I gestured left. "Turn here."

Alcide shook his head. "Store's the other way."

"I know. We're not going to the store." I gave him a So Sorry Face and pointed again. "That way."

He squinted suspiciously, but followed my finger. "Where we going?"

My face pinched harder with the Sorry. "Burgers?"

"My ass. Damn you, baby sister. Wherever we're going, is there a good chance we're gonna get killed?"

"Nope," I answered honestly. "No killing. Just... not the store."

I procrastinated telling him the whole deal until he'd pulled into the clinic's parking lot and killed the engine. He saw the sign, then looked at me again, his lower jaw sawing back and forth in irritation. "You gonna give me a hint here, Sook?"

We shared a quiet stare for what felt like forever.

I was turning into Eric. When in doubt, stare hard. Shut yer yap. Reveal nothing. Lie.

I wanted to lie. Again. To a very dear friend.

But that was pointless. In another day or two, it was going to be painfully obvious. I could try to continue to hide under increasingly baggy clothes, but close friends and family - anyone we decided to enlighten - would know soon enough. Pam was already suspicious.

I bit down on my ever-growing caginess and looked Alcide dead in the eye.

"I'm pregnant."

He snorted. "And I'm Mae West. Fuck you. Quit fuckin' fucking with me."

I lifted my top and flashed him my round belly.

He actually threw himself against his door, turning fully towards me while pushing back as far as he could get. "Holy shit!"

"Told ya."

"I'll be a ... Who's the father?"

I gave him a skeptical look. "Who do ya think?"

"Who do I think? Who do I _THINK_? It must be God Almighty his-Christly-self, cuz I _KNOW_ for a fact it ain't Eric. And what the fuck? You were flat as an iron two weeks ago! What the hell is going on, Sookie?!"

Oh, God. This was going to be everyone's reaction. Maybe I should skip the heart-to-hearts with everyone and just send out a group email with a photo of my stomach.

_Dear Everyone,_

_A bun's in the oven. See attachment. Hold all questions until the fate of the universe has been settled._

_Thanks y'all,  
__Sookie_

If only.

I quickly covered my stomach again and put my hands out in a Don't-Freak-Out position. "I know, and there's a perfectly rational, if not totally secret, reason for all of this that I _cannot_ tell you about. But trust me. I'm pregnant. It's Eric's. And everything is just fine. Probably."

I pointed to the clinic. "They don't have night hours, so Eric couldn't come for my first ultrasound. So, he asked you."

His head was slowly shaking back and forth. "Man, I miss werewolf problems. Deltas fighting and bitches whelping and pack-related shit. I don't know if vampire problems or Stackhouse problems are worse."

I nodded sympathetically. "It's a photo-finish, I'll give you that."

He palmed the back of his neck, looking totally lost. I reached out and patted his knee, letting him process. The air in the cab turned into kindly concern as he glanced at my covered stomach and his eyes went soft. Eric had been right. Alcide was a natural-born father. Children turned the big, bad wolf into a pushover Labradoodle.

He took a long, unnerving inhalation through his nose. I'd seen Eric do the same many times. Scenting the air for my baby. It was amazing how intimate the action was, given that the man himself never moved.

"Do you smell him?"

He narrowed his eyes, taking another breath. The look of confused concentration on his face made me feel better. If my baby didn't smell normal to Eric or Alcide, then maybe we could continue to hide him for just a little longer.

He dragged air through his teeth, making a clicking noise. "I smell something, now that you say it. Before, I just thought you smelled like Eric. And you, obviously. Now... I dunno... there's something there. Like... flowers? Maybe? And... I'm not real sure because I've never smelled the real thing before, but you kinda smell like... I dunno, frost or something. Or ice. But like, _old_ ice. Ice that never melts. It's real clean, like there's no rot where it comes from. The smell of Eric's blood is similar, the smell of your birthplace never leaves ya, but this... It's like your baby's from the last Ice Age."

He shrugged, frustrated. "Never smelled anything like it. But it's faint. Very faint."

I'd been watching him struggle with his description, fascinated. He and Eric had such a lucky ability. I hated my human nose and how it blocked my chance to know my own child in such a magical way. I smelled nothing on me except peach soap and conditioner. I was painting by numbers while these two men knocked out a Rembrandt without trying.

"That's him," I whispered. "Eric said the same."

He inhaled again, but not for scent, and rose up higher in his seat, an alpha male rearing up. _Must protect pregnant female_. His eyes were filled with nothing but concern. "Is he gonna be like Hunter?"

Hunter. The mind-reading nephew, just like his aunt. I had no answer to that and told him as much. I left out that Mo being born a mere telepath was the least of our worries.

He accepted that, looking at the clinic like it was Everest.

"So," I chirped sunnily, smiling like Crazy Old Sookie. "Wanna be my date?"

He chuckled, "Are we pretending it's mine?"

"I guess. Ludwig said she'd have false paperwork for me. If there's no daddy listed, you can be the concerned brother or something."

"Speaking of, have you told Jason yet?"

"Has a blonde lunatic shown up at your door with a shotgun, demanding you or whoever the responsible party is make an honest woman out of me?"

"You ain't gonna tell him it's Eric's?" he asked.

"I haven't thought that far ahead, but I doubt it. I can't handle the only man in my family coming down with Daddy Issues for me. I'll tell him he's gonna be an uncle, when I figure out the right words, but I'll avoid it until the little guy's fourth birthday, if I can. I don't need protection from this, and Jason will just rejig reality until he's certain that I was cloistered away in a nunnery making cookies for orphans and reading to the blind when some villian in a black cowboy hat ran me down and took my innocence away. Pretty rich, coming from a vaunted cooch collector like Jason, but I know my brother. He'll see red until there's a wedding."

"What about everybody else? You seem to be moving right along down there," he pointed at my belly.

"One day at a time, Alcide."

"Fair enough," he acquiesced. "Shall we?"

We went inside. Ludwig met us immediately and ushered me through the waiting room filled with women sporting anything from a potato to a basketball under their shirts. She pointed to an empty chair next to a magazine rack filled with Cosmo and Little Tykes.

"You sit there," she barked at Alcide.

I gave him an apologetic look for the hundredth time as I was led away, leaving him in a herd of swollen, weepy, angry, horny mothers-to-be. Whatever Eric was paying him, it wasn't enough.

As we walked through the hall, I reached in my purse and pulled out the two small vials, one white and one red. I showed her discreetly in my hand. She took them and pocketed them without a word. That part of the examination was strictly off the books.

She brought me into a darkened room and gestured to the plastic-covered bed. "Please lie down. Roll up your shirt and pull down you pants slightly."

I did as I was told, leaning back gingerly until I was settled, then pulling at my clothes until my bump was bare. As I'd suspected last night, it had already grown a bit.

She took out a squeeze bottle from a cupboard filled with medical supplies and sprayed my belly with cool blue jelly. She applied some to the span of what I assumed was the ultrasound wand, then pressed it gently against my hip.

A screen above the bed sprang to life, a black window with a bunch of tiny numbers and indecipherable medical symbols scattered on it.

I cleared my throat. "I, um... I never got to thank you, doctor. For helping us the way you are? I don't know what we would have done without you."

Ludwig was watching another, smaller screen next to my head that faced her, away from me. She didn't spare a glance at me, and just nodded absently as she began to move the wand through the jelly up higher along my belly.

"Try to relax," she instructed. "Watch the monitor. You'll be able to see her in a minute."

I blew out a breath and tried to follow her directions. I released my weight, trusting the bed to hold me. I watched the dark screen anxiously. I had no idea what to expect.

Suddenly, a long, gray, fuzzy shape popped up. The doctor's eyes softened with certaintly as she began to move the wand in what seemed like a familiar pattern to her.

"The thigh bone," she said out loud. She pushed a bit upwards. The shape changed into a fat, multi-shaded oval. "The abdomen," she identified.

The shape roiled and twitched, the different areas of gray going darker or lighter. She zeroed in on a strange black spot. It trembled at such a rapid speed, I actually jumped when the doctor flipped a switch and the room filled with a thick whooshing noise.

"The heart," she said. "Very healthy. All chambers have formed well." She listened a moment, clicking her mouse, taking measurements. "Her rate is excellent. All major organs are working normally." She moved away from the heart, but kept the speakers on so I could listen to the insane little beat. "Spine and skull are within accepted parameters, no signs of Down's Syndrome or spina bifida."

She moved again and looked at something big and spongey. "Placenta," she said. "Good thickness. Well placed in the uterus. No threat of blockage."

She went quiet for awhile, clicking her mouse, moving around my stomach, deep in her element.

I just stared.

I stared forever.

I don't think I blinked once as I watched the image expand and contract like a black-and-white kaleidoscope. The whooshing sound sped up, then slowed down. It looked like the baby was moving around a lot. The wand seemed to chase it around the tight confines of my womb, always finding it before it up and swam away again.

Like its parents. It liked a good chase.

The wand swooped and pressed deep into my pubic bone. The shape reformed. I felt breathless, looking at the profile of what was clearly a teeny, tiny baby, curled up on its side. Little hands, little feet, big round head. I couldn't believe it.

Ludwig held the wand still. "Would you like to know the sex?" she asked.

My eyes darted from the screen to her time-worn face. "You can tell? Already?"

"Already my eye, Miss Stackhouse. I know you're Fae, but in human terms, you are six months along. Everything I can detect shows me that your child, while sped up, is perfectly healthy. No indications of mutation or malignancy. Our tools for examining magical children are crude, but so far, the baby is normal."

Relief flooded me. I knew we had a long way to go, but at least we'd cleared this first hurdle. Mo was healthy. And fit to be tied, from what I could see.

"The sex, Miss Stackhouse?"

"Oh," I replied, coming back to her. "Um...I hadn't thought about it. I was just so anxious about what you'd find, I didn't..." my thought petered out.

She waited expectantly.

I swallowed a nervous lump in my throat. "You already saw? You already know?"

"Yes," she answered.

We'd know in a few weeks. We'd know for the rest of our _very_ long lives. Finding out now without Eric felt wrong. He should be here when we hear the news for the first time. I wanted us to look into each other's eyes when we discovered together. To see each other's joy, no matter the answer.

I should wait. I should call him secretly so that he can at least hear the news with me, even if I couldn't see him. I should hang on until the birth and just let it be a surprise.

I should.

I couldn't.

"Tell me," I whispered.

She gave me a rare, small smile. "Congratulations, Sookie Stackhouse," she said. "You have a son."


	46. Chapter 46

**A/N: I'd like to point out my new VERY sexy story image, drawn for Pretty Kitty by the ree-diculously talented brutalfreeze, aka darklydreamingdead. She also drew another picture inspired by PK, which is too risque for the prudish FF guidelines to use, but I highly recommend everyone go look at it in her deviantART account. ****It's one of the more haunting and sexy pieces of fan art that I've seen in a good long while. Google art/Min-karlek-min-hem-381267499. It's the perfect mix of beauty and smut. **

**Thank you, brutalfreeze! **

**Speaking of smut, Eric's POV. **

Sookie came home three hours later, laden with pastel shopping bags from a store called Egg. She was still wearing Pam's black track suit, the one Pam left behind in case she was tasked with wet work and needed an outfit she didn't mind ruining. She had an envelope in her hand alongside her keys.

I prowled on the dark landing of my stairs, making sure Alcide didn't follow her inside. My daywalking was still secret from everyone but Pam, and I wasn't about to make the wolf suspicious by lounging around in my living room watching tv at five o'clock in the afternoon. Luckily, he stayed in his truck, only driving away once Sookie had locked the door behind her.

The physical space between us had been agony, as usual. Her Radia had been seriously displeased, choking my heart as punishment for letting Sookie leave its comfort orbit of ten feet. After thirty minutes of Sookie's absence, the Radia, cruel little mistress that she was, began filling my head with horrible images of Sookie getting into a car wreck. Seeing a squid-like monster on the ultrasound. Kidnapped by _another_ pack of wolves. Even smiling sweetly at the male nurse behind the desk at the clinic as he blatantly eye fucked her, all while she heard him wondering if it would be strange to ask a pregnant woman to dinner. The last one had me ordering more online groceries to be delivered to the house, with emphasis on leafy greens, red meat, bean salads, and anything else the internet suggested I feed a growing fetus.

I knew the Radia was goading me, showing me my worst fears in an attempt to propel me into the daylight and retrieve her. Or perhaps it was all my own doing. I wasn't sure. Whatever the case, I only began to feel better once I felt her getting closer and closer, until she walked through the door, moving through the rooms she was beginning to know well.

From my perch high on the mezzanine, I watched her as she set her purse down on the entry table before turning back to the wall and reactivating the security system. Her mind was focused on her task as her small hand danced over the number pad. She wasn't paying attention to our bond and was unaware of my presence.

I watched her ponytail hop from one shoulder to the other, making swishing noises on the godawful material of her track jacket. I watched the seductive curve of her neck as she cocked her head, remembering the long string of numbers needed to lock us in. I leaned forward, trying to peek into the bags at her side, ascertaining that she appeared to have bought clothing, which pleased me. She needed new things for her ever-changing figure. As I'd discovered just that morning when she'd spent hours administering my "physical", her stomach was growing at a phenomenal rate. I made a mental note to be careful with her new wardrobe, as I was learning to be careful with the exquisitely finespun rest of her. She kept laughing at me, calling me silly, saying she wasn't made of crystal and my precautions were unnecessary.

Of course not. I shattered crystal all the time and forgot about it as quickly as the noise died down. This was Sookie carrying my baby. So I kept my hands and body as soft as a monster was capable. Her maternity clothes would require the same consideration. A gentle man did not tear the clothes off his pregnant woman anyway. He removed them slowly. Very slowly. My own father, gruff asshole that he often was, had morphed into a fawning pussycat when my mother carried my baby sister. She had smiled just as indulgently as Sookie did with me when he repadded their bedding with more furs and sang softly against her swollen belly. He gave her the choicest cuts of every deer kill. He rubbed her aching back and calves. He even broke with tradition and breached the threshold of the women's blood hut, staying at her side as she endured labor, as I was told he had done at my birth as well. He couldn't help himself. The blood-caked warrior king went stupid with domestic contentment while his queen made new life.

Evidently it was genetic.

Sookie set her shopping down by the door. Turning, she leaned back against it, lifting the envelope and, with shaky fingers, opened the flap and pulled out several pictures. Their white backs faced me, I could only see her expression as she fanned them out in her hands. The envelope fell to the floor.

After several uneven breaths, she smiled weakly at the photos.

"Hi, baby," she whispered uncertainly. "I... I don't know what's going on, or who you are, but don't you worry. I'm here. I'll... I'll keep you safe." She gave a stuttering laugh, dropping her head to her chest, then quickly lifting it again. "Baby boy. _I'm_ here. Everything's gonna be okay."

_Boy._

I was in front of her in a flash, flying diagonally from ceiling to floor. She yelped, sending the photos flying in all directions. She continued to smile for me, even though she'd plastered herself to the door in surprise at my appearance. Unable to tear my eyes away from her, I reached down and picked up a photo from the floor without looking.

I held it up. A small, unmistakable profile of a baby, drawn in the hazy mechanical lines of sonar, met my gaze.

My hand trembled slightly as I slowly slid the picture into my back pocket. I would carry it with me for the rest of my life. I took Sookie by the shoulders, drilling her with my most predatory glare.

"What are you giving me?"

Her eyes were huge. Her heart beat in her chest like a caged bird. She looked impossibly fragile and beautiful. "I..."

"_WHAT_?! Are you giving me?" I barked. I wanted her to say it again. More than I wanted anything with the exception of her.

She jumped under my hands at my shout. With her shoulders pinned to the door, she leaned her head towards me and whispered softly, "A son."

I lost my mind for the next few minutes. I don't remember what I'd said or how it came to pass that Sookie and I were naked on my hard, cold floor. The photos remained scattered around us. I'd apparently ripped her shopping bags apart and made an impromptu nest to buffer her back and head while I pistoned into her nubile body, staring into her wide, startled eyes. Her hands cupped my back in reassurance, her mind telling me that whatever mania had me pumping into her like an animal, it was okay. She would help me through it.

She peppered warm kisses on my face and neck, whispering to me as I pounded out my violent joy.

Her arms began to slacken as my pace left her sweating, boneless, and gasping against more orgasms than she could withstand.

I leaned down to her lips, mindful of the precious cargo between us.

I kissed her softly. "What are you giving me?"

Her eyes fluttered. "A son," she moaned again sweetly.

"How many _more_ will you give me?"

She fought her drugged state to look at me clearly. I saw a spark of defiance in the sea of exhaustion. "Three?"

I snarled. Gripping her by the hair, I pulled her head back, baring her perfect throat. I nipped her chin in disapproval. "No. More. How many?"

"Five." Her answer held slightly more sass than the first.

I grabbed her soothing hands from my back and pinned them over her head, into the mess of polka dots and sunny hues beneath us.

"_More! How many?!"_

She bowed upwards into my face, fearless. "Ten!"

"_MORE_!"

"A hundred!"

"Better!" I roared. "And as many daughters! In having a boy, you're in debt for my girl children. We start the month after his birth!"

She swore at me, then closed her eyes and whimpered my name as her body took over and clenched around my relentless cock. How would she ever give birth to our children when her pussy narrowed to the width of a dime? I bellowed as my release was choked out of me. Sookie sobbed against me, clasping my hands, her body alive with tremors as she rode out the electrical storm that occurred in a sated Fae.

I kept my weight on my hands and knees. My forehead pressed into her damp hairline, I whispered little gratitudes and compliments in my old tongue, and delighted when she returned them in the same. She truly was the most astounding thing.

She eased her fingers from mine and resumed stroking down the length of my spine, snaking her index finger between each vertebrae.

I chuckled as her mind resumed sending me balm for my temporary insanity.

"One day," I rasped against her lips, "I will be able to look at you and not lose my mind."

"Not me," she said hoarsely. "There's no cure for what you do to me, and I don't want one."

I gently surged forward, edging deeper inside her, pressing my body into her, noting how her soft flesh molded into my harsher anatomy.

"How was your appointment? What did Ludwig say?"

"Are you sittin' down? I'm pregnant."

"With what again?" I squinted, trying to recall.

She sighed in exasperation. "Your son."

"Fucking yes you are."

"Caveman. Anyway, everything's all good, as far as she could tell. Head, shoulders, knees and toes. She took more blood. She gave me vitamins. I got to listen to his heart beat."

My own clenched in jealousy. She applied more balm to me. "Why dontchu take a listen for yourself?"

She pecked me, the pushed me down by the shoulders until my ear was against her stomach, as it had been earlier that day. I had heard him kick, but I hadn't detected his heart. It should have been as clear as Sookie's, but I'd simply assumed that his heartbeat, like his scent, was being purposefully elusive.

I pushed all of my focus into my ear canals. I picked up, then eliminated the traffic of Sookie's body. Her own heartbeat. The rush of her circulation. The small windstorm of her breathing. The flap of her eyelids. The rustling of her hair. I pushed them all away, concentrating hard.

There.

Just there.

Every bit as faint as his scent, but every bit as real... his heart. On finding it, I went deathly still. It faded a bit, as if hiding. I tightened my ear to her, desperate to keep it. Without thinking, I threw out a mental plea, similar in the way I communicated with Sookie, asking the tiny life to please stay and talk to me. I wasn't sure why I'd done so. I had no mental tie with this child as I did with his mother. I wasn't even sure if such a connection was possible with such a nascent mind. I just didn't want it to leave, not when hearing it did caused such a wonderous ache in me.

And he must have heard me.

My child, who seemed capable to cloaking himself so well against detection, allowed his heart to beat as loudly as an ordinary baby's would. The sound went from muted to thunderous in my head. I gasped at the change in volume. It was fast and strong, ringing out in Sookie's belly like an iron bell.

My son heard me.

He knew me.

He knew he could bare himself to me, unlike the rest of my kind.

I trapped him in my hands, breathing him in as I listened.

Sookie held still and patient under me. "Anything?" she whispered, not wanting to disturb my quest.

I nodded very slightly. "He knows I'm here," I replied quietly. "He's letting me listen."

Sookie gave a soft, shuddering breath. "Amazing, isn't it?"

I was silent and just held her, pressing my love through the barrier of her skin. She held my head, her thumbs rubbing my forehead. Together, we lay quietly, the three of us absorbed in each other.

After many minutes, Sookie finally spoke. "We need a name. Something better than Moses Skywalker Stackhouse-Northman."

"Too late. I've already ordered the monogram."

"_Un_order it. It sucks ass. What about a family name? Your dad maybe? Or uncles?"

"You're thoughtful to offer, but my father's name was Björn and my uncles Olof and Styrbjörn. I wouldn't wish those names on any modern child."

"Yikes," she giggled. "Okay, do you object to Bible names?"

"No. As far as themes go, I only object to place names and action verbs. No Dakota. No Buck. No Ticonderoga. No Chase."

She giggled throughout my list.

We didn't speak for awhile again, returning to silence for her and the pounding drum of her womb for me.

She picked up a lace bra from our nest, idly letting it tangle around her fingers.

"What about Adam? Do you like Adam?"

I lifted my head, gazing up her beautiful body until I reached her questioning eyes. "The first man."

"Yeah. Seems... I dunno. Fitting."

Her uncertainty was adorable. I looked down at her belly. Her navel had almost popped outwards against the strain. I put my lips to it. "What do you think, my son?" I asked. "Shall you be Adam Stackhouse-Northman when you enter this world?"

He didn't answer. He simply thumped away, his heart just as loud as before. I took it as assent.

I looked back up at my queen. "He agrees to your choice. Adam will be our first."

I was about to tease her for her trembling lower lip and emotional reaction to the naming of our child when my phone rang in my pocket somewhere nearby. I cursed. Why was someone always encroaching on our private moments?

The clock on the wall said it was seven o'clock. Had Sookie really been home for two hours? It felt like minutes. The sun had set, so that meant anyone could be calling, including vampires. I had to make myself available as king.

I cursed again, lifting from the arms of my woman, and found my pants. I stabbed the green button blinking below Private Number. "Northman."

"Good. You're awake. I've run some tests and thought you'd like to hear my findings," the doctor's dry voice informed me. My glamor had obviously allowed the woman to remember to call me with new information. Good.

I needed to get dressed and get to Fangtasia. I had several meetings over the course of the evening. I balanced the phone on my shoulder and stepped into my pants. "Tell me."

Sookie took my cue, rising from her pile of clothing, sighing in resignation that we were done for the night. Her nude, young body looked absolutely edible as she began to lift and refold her new things before piling them up according to garment type. She bent at the waist, flashing her pert ass at me, only to straighten and provoke me with her cute little bump. Innocently done, but I saw it as outrageously provocative. It was on the tip of my tongue to order her to stay naked.

Luckily, the antithesis of provocative distracted me.

"Your semen yielded no information. It was a vampire sample like all others I've seen," Ludwig said.

"Lovely."

"It's your blood that intrigues me. Rather, your bloods."

"Explain."

"I examined the sample you provided. Alone, it's unremarkable. Inert, as all vampire blood is. That is, until it came into proximity to Sookie's blood."

I waited. She resumed.

"I decided to test them alongside each other. When I placed one drop of each on a level slide, they came together like magnets, dragging across the glass until they merged as one large drop."

"Interesting."

"Interesting was a weigh station fifty miles back, Northman. Let me finish."

"All right," I said.

"I tested them again. This time I allowed them to inhabit the same slide, but I surrounded yours with a circle of silver dust. It tested every direction, looking for a break in line of poison before it finally just slogged across it, burning the majority of itself away. The small amount that survived the crossing limped to Sookie's drop, which had been making its way towards yours, but not fast enough for its liking. Your battered drop fell into hers like it was home from 'Nam. Her drop curled around that smaller, burned drop, as if it wanted to heal its broken mate."

She'd asked me not to interrupt and I didn't. I was happy not to. While her description didn't surprise me, it still amazed me.

She let me absorb that, then went on. "Finally, I put two vials of each blood sample next to each other on the counter. Sweet _Christ_. The blood roiled in their tubes, seeming to grow frustrated. The vials themselves grew hot and pressurized until they shattered under the strain. Your bloods united again, puddling as a single body, growing calm until it settled down entirely. Picture of innocence. Someone walking in ten minutes after the event would never have had a clue about the impossibility that just occurred."

I still did not speak.

She gave a pained clearing of her throat. "I imagine I could have run tests of this nature all day until I ran out of sample. Your bloods need each other. They're drawn to each other. They fight for and heal each other. As a medical professional, I can't help but violate my scientific beliefs and assume I've witnessed a miracle."

"Am I allowed to say 'interesting' now?" I asked.

"Sure. Astonish me with your cool head. Meanwhile, mine's on fire. The only conclusion that's in keeping with my examinations of Sookie and both your blood is that you are the father of her child. Given their attachment, I doubt your bodies would have allowed anything else."

"Prognosis?"

"I continue to see Sookie every day. That's all I can offer at this point."

"Fine. See you tomorrow evening."

"I'd rather see her during the dayti-,"

"I don't care. I'm at her side for every appointment from now on. Fangtasia at midnight. Understood?"

"I'm charging double."

"Beautiful." I hung up.

As I turned to Sookie, I was greeted with a vision in a mint green sundress. She looked exactly the same as she always did, only a tiny bulge, which the dress artfully concealed most of, betrayed her. Bare feet, wild hair, and beestrung lips swollen from my kisses.

"I love you," I said simply.

She smiled and curtseyed, holding the ends of her dress. "Thank you, my king."

I relayed what Ludwig had told me. Sookie let out a long, low whistle. "Well if that don't beat all."

We went upstairs. I put on a new shirt while she hung and shelved her new clothes. She turned to me. "You mind if I stay home tonight? Maybe call Jason over for dinner? And try to contact Claudine again about this Custos business? I haven't slept today and I'm feelin' it."

I nodded. "Yes. In fact, we must decide how to procede now that you're showing so clearly. Fangtasia isn't safe for something as tempting as a pregnant Fae. Nor is it wise to advertize. Stay here. Call your brother. I'll glamor him later to forget the address."

She smiled and hugged me. "I'll miss you."

"And I you."

"Hurry back."

I tipped her chin up and smiled into her dark eyes. "An ocean of silver can't keep me from you."

**SPOILER ALERT: You Know What Grinds My Gears?**

**Okay, the last ep was equal parts awesome and disappointing. As usual, Vamp Camp continues to be interesting because let's face it, we all know the writers ripped it off of kjwrit. Hep V and Burrell's interest in bottling Tru Blood finally makes sense and is a decent, well-thought out twist. I'd forgotten what those look like. **

**Terry's death was just weird. He fought tooth and nail to survive the smoke monster all last season, and even killed Patrick, then suddenly he can't get dead fast enough. Of course THAT'S when someone has the brilliant idea to glamor his PTSD away. Jessica has been working ten feet away for how many seasons now? And it just occured to them? Anyway, a day late and one bullet short. Terry buys the farm. I liked him, and Arlene has shitty luck with men, but he was one of the more expendable characters. **

**Sookie trips over yet another supernatural penis. I just don't freakin' get it. She broke up with Bill and Eric for the vague reasons that someone will get hurt if she doesn't. Which never made sense to me because walking away left three people hurt, instead of picking one and leaving just ONE of them hurt. See? That's called math. That leaves only two likely conclusions: a) Sookie decided she'd had enough with men for a while and wanted to be alone. Great. More power to her. I would have liked that, actually. Wanting clarity and needing to sort things out for yourself. Makes total sense. Except she nearly balled Alcide twenty minutes later, which leads me to b) Sookie wants a normal life devoid of all things supe. That also falls flat, given that the company she keeps is almost exclusively supe. Since vampires aren't the only group trying to stir her shit, it would make sense that she'd want nothing to do with any of them and just kinda turn into a non-hateful Arlene, i.e. stick to yer own. But no. She drunk-humps Alcide (which probably HURT HIS FEELINGS, YOU BITCH. REMEMBER HOW YOU DIDN'T WANT TO HURT ANYBODY?) Now she's agreeing with the townsfolk that she's a danger whore and fucks Warlow on a grave in fairy land. **

**First, isn't she worried that ANOTHER year will pass while they're in this place? Bill blew a few hours there once, so we know time is fastforwarding there. Second, I hate the word 'whore'. Let's ignore the fact that Sookie has slept with THREE whole men in her 30 years. Let's say she's done 100. So the fuck what? Just like Jason threatening Sarah that he'd out her for being a whore, which would lead to her disgrace and shunning at Vamp Camp. Ummmm, why exactly? Why would anyone care that she's slept with Jason or anyone else? The only person is the show who seems to respect women (aside from Eric, who is now surrounded by-count'em-five loyal female vampires) is James The Vampire But Not A Rapist. Because having sex in a sterile cube at sunpoint for the amusement of Doctor Evils is NOT how he likes to romance a lady. I hope we see him again. **

**Finally, her interest in Warlow feels phoned in. Bill's seduction made sense. Eric's seduction made sense. Both took years and many scenes that were very well conceived. There were little looks. Little smiles. Big ole fights. Her love for these men happened organically. Warlow? Shows up with an injury and a bullshit story (like Bill), claims to have loved Sookie for the last 5,000 years (WTF?) and insists they belong together without really going into how or why. Sookie validly points out that she's not special. Warlow flatters her easy heart and says she is (again, just not why, specifically). Sookie shrugs, strips, and nails him. **

**Maybe it makes sense? Maybe having hunk after hunk bang down her door insisting they love her is just grinding her down? "Fine. Let's do it. There. Thanks for the memories. Next!" Maybe the next guy won't even have to bother with fangs and a line. He'll just show up, get laid, and leave. The writers won't even have to stop Facebooking at the same time, just bang it out and send it to the new EP. **

**My only hope now for Eric and Sookie is that Warlow still went apeshit and killed all the clubbing Fae AND imprisoned Niall. Surely a loving man who takes care of his own and honors her wishes is better than a shady new piece of strange. But again, she may not care. Sookie is getting really apathetic about stuff lately. What's one more room of dead people, really? **

**Okay, rant over. **

**I'm ficlit, and these are what grind my gears**.


	47. Chapter 47

**A/N: To reader BabyDollHeart, kjwrit and I owe you a coke. Thanks for the head's up. Sookie's POV**

In the end, I decided to go against my own advice.

As Eric collected the last of his things, preparing to leave for Fangtasia, I told him I was going to tell Jason about the baby. He had his wallet in his hand. He didn't look up as he flipped it open to the empty picture sleeves and carefully slid Adam's ultrasound image into one of them. His eyes were a thousand miles away as he gazed at his son, hidden away whenever he wanted to look at him.

My hands warmed up in response. My Light always wanted to reward him when he proved so loyal and lovable. I looked down and saw my palms glowing faintly. Eric saw it out of the corner of his eye. His legs braced slightly, readying for the hit. I wanted to give it to him, but I clenched my hands and willed them to dim. Now was not the time to distract him with love shots.

He finally looked at me and nodded his thanks. I still felt the ripple of disappointment in the bond, though.

"What exactly will you tell him?" he asked.

I shrugged. "The basics, I guess. I'll keep it as simple as I can."

"You said you never told him anything before. Will you tell him now that you're a fairy? About Claudine? About the prophesy?"

I shook my head emphatically at each one. "Hell no. I'm not even sure he knows that vampires can't make babies ordinarily. I'll just say that you and I are deeply in love and that somehow, maybe because I'm different from normal people, I'm able to have your child."

"In just one month? Surely even he will notice your stomach."

"I dunno, babe. I'll think of something."

He Sookie-smiled and walked over to me. His hands rose to my head, where his fingers began to comb through what I can only imagine was a tornado of sex hair. "Will he demand I marry you? He seems the type."

I snorted indelicately. "Fuck him if he does. I'll start naming every woman he's ever nailed and ask which of _them_ is the lucky girl he plans to hitch. Being an uncle is his business. My relationship with you? Well. I'll just remind him that his nose is for smellin', not for snoopin'."

I felt the tangles in my hair being patiently pulled apart, the long hairs smoothed down.

I leaned into my vampire brush. "Isn't this usually my job?"

"Am I not allowed to play with yours as well?"

"Play away. I love your hands. They're beautiful." I blushed a little. I _still_ felt silly paying him compliments.

He saw it and chuckled softly. "You've come screaming my name while your ass nearly severed my cock off, yet you blush because you say my hands are beautiful?"

My blush went from pink to red and I looked at the floor. "Jeez, Eric," I breathed out. "Not all of us are as liberated as you, okay? Yes, I still get embarrassed around you sometimes. I know I was in Faery for months, but it didn't seem like it to me. As far as I'm concerned, five weeks ago I was screamin' for you to get your cement-covered ass off my porch and outta my life forever. Now you're mine and you can make me blush just by _staring_ at me for one second too long." I ventured a gaze up at him.

He was no longer smiling. His fingers stilled in my hair.

I wasn't sure why, but I felt an argument coming.

Our bond felt calm enough on the surface, but I could sense an undercurrent. The wheels turned behind his eyes. His response took its time.

"You do far worse than embarrass me. You weaken me. Even when you hated me, I couldn't smother my horror at losing you. Your time in the Fae world brought me lower than all the torture, all imprisonments, all deaths I've ever endured. Even Godric's."

"I know that now," I soothed, reaching out and putting my hands on his shoulders. "And I hate that I hurt you, even unintentionally. One day, one day very soon, you and I are going to sit down and start at the beginning. You're going to tell me everything about Eiríkr inn sigrsæli and his thousand years on this planet..."

He flinched hard under my hands at the use of his true, given name.

"...And I," I continued, "will tell you absolutely everything about me. Every memory, every emotion, every last, boring detail about my twenty-six years in northern Louisianna. About my Gran. Why I worked at Merlotte's. Why I agreed to be Bill's. Why I fought against you for so long. Everything. No holds barred. What do you say?"

He loomed over me. "You know my name. _No one knows my name_. Not even Pam."

"Pam wasn't on the sidelines watching your pale butt get drained on a funeral pyre in 995AD."

The bond spiked sharply and his hands, which had still held pieces of my hair, cupped my head, holding it in place as his eyes drilled into mine. I thought he might try to shake me like a Magic 8 Ball, impatient for me to divulge my secrets. He looked incredulous at my knowledge of his past.

"_Are_ you an angel, Sookie? A valkyrie after all? _My_ valkyrie? Watching me from the skies? Choosing me of all the men fighting that night?"

I smiled gently at his wide-eyed awe, that I might have perhaps flown down as a raven and Chosen him to be my dead champion in the afterlife, all those years ago. It spoke to just how amazing he found me.

I shook my head. "No, ya nut. I'm no angel. I wasn't there, but Claudine was around. She remembers it all."

The bond retreated from its rapidly approaching boil, simmering quietly at such an obvious, logical response.

"Of course," he muttered, loosening his hold on me, looking away. "Of course."

I surprised him when I reached up and caught his chin, bringing his eyes back to mine, just as he'd done a hundred times with mine. "Hey," I said. "I still want to know. We're going to be together for a very long time, and I want you to tell me every tiny little shard that makes up your life. All of it. Even the ugly shit."

"There's a disproportionate amount of ugly shit, lover. Only outweighed by the boring shit. I don't want to inflict on you."

"Hush," I said, my lips turning up impishly. "If you love me, if you insist on spoiling me with things I want, then give me your life. I want it all, Eric. All of you."

He hunched down, bringing our faces together.

I pecked his nose. "You promised me anything I wanted. Don't make a liar out of yourself."

He exhaled slowly, his chest bowing inward in defeat. "I can't imagine giving you anything less beautiful than my memories, but I cannot refuse. They're yours. Name any day and I'll tell you how I spent it."

I laughed. "I can't even remember what I had for breakfast four days ago. Your brain must be brimming if I can name any day and you can remember it perfectly."

"A vampire perk. I can still see them all."

I whistled, then pushed him back out of my space. "You're gonna be late. If you find a good time, you should bring Pam up to speed. I'm sure she's feeling neglected."

"Pam's a big girl," he replied, letting me go unwillingly.

"Pam's a water balloon wrapped in razor wire."

Eric's brow went up. "What an odd image."

"I just mean that once you finish getting all ripped up and bloodied by her exterior, she's a pure squishy center. Especially for you. Maybe only for you. My point is that she's not as tough as she seems. She's still a Child and she still loves and needs you. And once you tell her that you're having a _real_ child, she'll need that reassurance even more. So go be fatherly and tell her she's still your favorite."

He looked at me blankly. "Even if it's no longer true?"

Pleasure and sadness struck my chest at the same time. Yay me. Poor Pam. "Especially if it's not true."

He nodded and robotically filed away my suggestion. He'd lie through his teeth and tell Pam she was still daddy's little girl. As we walked towards the front door, he turned again, dragging me into his arms, playing dangerously with the side zipper on my dress. "And what of Claudine? What if she appears?"

"If Ludwig is right, then she's got alotta e'splaining to do."

"You still trust her? I don't like the idea of you being alone with her."

I waved him off. "I'm fine. _She's_ fine. I've been alone with her bunches of times. No matter what, Claudine's on our side. I just want to know if she is a Custos. If she is, which one? Why didn't say tell me? Does she know more about the Coming than she's letting on? If it's no big deal and she turns out to be the Custos of dolphin migratory patterns or Peruvian wood carving, then at the very least, I can introduce her to Jason and we can all have a nice meal together."

"I doubt the Custos are that specific in their categories."

"Pardon me, Dr. KnowItAll. I only heard about these people a couple days ago. Pray tell, might _you_ be the Custos of Smartassery? Hotassery? Kissmyassery?"

He growled and felt me up while I giggled. "That last one. Definitely."

I wiggled out of his grip. "Git. Have your meetings. Go be a big shot."

He swooped low, bowing deep at the waist, he arms out in supplication. "As my queen commands."

"Git!"

A reach-around slap to my ass for good measure, and he was out the door. I heard him reengage the security system from the pad outside.

Laughing to myself, I padded over to the entry table where I'd dropped my purse that afternoon. The floor was chilly under my bare feet. I fished my phone out of my purse, punching Jason's number as I headed for the stairs. I thought I'd seen some fuzzy slippers in my section of the closet.

He answered on the fourth ring.

"Hey," I said, taking two stairs at a time. "You ready for that gold leaf beer, another apology and a home-cooked meal?"

"Jenna Jameson get back to you about bein' that beer's ass cozy?" he asked. It sounded like a genuine question.

"Don't be stupid, Jason. Do you want food and to hear what's goin' on with me, or not?"

"Yeah," he answered quickly. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do, I just um... I got some important work that needs... you know... doin' and I-,"

"Call up that _important work_ and tell her your sister had a breakdown and needed her big brother to come make her feel better. You'll earn brownie points for the next time she booty calls you."

"But I called _her_."

Of course he had. "You're such an ass. Fine. I'll just crack a can of cold soup and eat all by myself."

"Aw, come on now, Sook. All right. You win. I'll head over in an hour or so. I'll bring a bucket of chicken. I've got the rotisserie shakes."

At least I wouldn't have to bake. "Thanks, Jase. I ain't at the house, though. I'll text you the address. Bring enough chicken for three." I considered Jason's appetite and amended, "For five."

"Cool. See you soon. I expect that beer, though."

Eric had cast a wide net when buying me food. The pantry had been stocked with four different kinds of beer, which I didn't drink as a rule anyway. But he'd covered all bases, filling his wine rack and the library's liquor cabinet. Clearly, he wanted me comfortable. Equally as clear, he still wasn't all that familiar with my preferences. It was funny to think that given how melted together we felt, our relationship was still shiny and new.

"You go it. See ya."

I hung up and quickly texted Eric's address to him.

I found those fuzzy beige slippers in the shoe rack. Putting them on, I stretched out my arms above my head. Eric's blood was already ornery about his absence. Where it usually tingled with pleasure at his presence, it snapped like a piranha school now that he was gone.

I never did like fish.

I tried my best to reassure it.

Heading back downstairs, I went into the pantry and grabbed half a dozen bottles of beer, three of each brand, and brought them out into the kitchen. I put four into the freezer for emergency chilling and put the rest in the fridge. I had no idea of Claudine drank alcohol, but just in case, there'd be a cold one for her, me and two for Jason.

Knowing that there was no real proper place to try, I stood in the center of the kitchen and threw my telepathy awareness out into the world around me. I still wasn't sure how summoning fairies worked. I didn't know if Claudine was capable of seeing me all the time, or if she could hear my thoughts across the divide between our worlds, or if my actively calling to her lit up some sort of interdimensional bat signal that clued her in.

I stood quietly, wiggling my fingers and my toes, listening to the confines of my own head, willing her to appear.

_I need to see you_, I sent out. _I need answers. Please. Can you come now?_

I repeated the message three more times before opening my eyes and deciding that while I waited, I'd make some mashed potatoes and salad to go with the chicken. I found everything I needed and quickly lost myself in the easy comfort of making food. I boiled the spuds. I mashed them finer than ice cream. I found butter and grated some cheese. I made dressing out of oil, balsamic vinegar, oregano and dijon mustard. I tossed the lettuce, tomatoes, spring onions and cucumbers into a large wooden bowl.

I was pulling out dinner plates and silverware when the air shifted into golden tones and the atmosphere felt thicker and warm.

_Pop!_

And Claudine was sitting expectantly on the counter next to me, her hands propping her up as she leaned back. She wore the same dress, except this time it looked white instead of pink.

"Hello, Sookie."

I wiped my hands on my apron, smiling at my kin. "Hey, Claudine. How are ya?"

She shrugged. "Busy, as you can imagine. Our council has been meeting nonstop since your last visit. Your news has sparked quite a commotion in our realm. In the last few days I've heard you called the Virgin Mary, the Harbinger of Death, Kasturba Gandhi, and my personal favorite, the Mother of Dragons."

I rolled my eyes. Sweet Jesus Christ.

She seemed happy to drop the subject as she looked around the kitchen. That was fine with me. "Are you well?"

"Fine as fine can be," I replied. I flattened my dress to my swollen figure, ruining the artful concealment. "As you can see here. I've had an interesting coupla meetings with Dr. Ludwig."

Her eyes widened as she took in my new look. It took her longer to process my second sentence. "Dr. Ludwig?" she said at last. "The supernatural doctor?"

I picked up one of the ultrasound images that I'd gathered from the floor and handed it to her. "Congratulations. You're the fairy god-grandmother of a bouncing baby boy."

She held the photo up, squinting. "My goodness. A boy child?"

"Yup."

"Ludwig conducted this scan? Is she aware of your...situation?"

I nodded. "She's been helping us, even agreed to be my midwife of sorts. She seems real knowledgeable about certain things. Says she schooled with texts written by the Custos of Medicine."

My name-dropping had the desired effect. Claudine looked flabbergasted. "The Custos of Medicine. Your doctor is schooled in the teachings of Galen."

I smirked. "So you know about him, huh? Yeah. She had some very interesting things to say about the man. About the Custos in general, actually." I waited a tick, looking expectantly at her. But she had recovered quickly, her eyes dropping into their cool, indifferent gaze.

Instead of questioning further, she simply changed the subject. "Your Chosen. Where is he tonight? I don't smell him here."

I played along. We were going to get there, dammit. She was going to spill her guts about everything she knew, I don't care if it took all night and every beer I had in stock. She wasn't leaving until she did.

So I just smiled. "He's at Fangtasia. I asked him if I could skip it tonight. My condition bein' what it is. That, and my brother's coming over. Would you care to stay for dinner? Chicken and mashed taters? Gran's recipe."

She lifted her head and scented the air, checking the food quality, before nodding. "I would like that. We've never simply eaten together."

I took off my apron and tossed in in the pantry before coming back in and drawing up a stool from the bar, facing her as I sat towards the counter.

She let her eyes wander to my belly again, which was sitting rather prominently in my lap now. Her gaze wasn't quite as glazed as it had been the first time she'd seen Adam's Light, but it was close. She looked like a strange combination of pure fascination and dopey, like a pot head staring at a lava lamp.

She spoke at it. "Does anyone suspect your condition at your vampire's bar? It's of great importance that you take care, cousin. The Scion is still vulnerable in your mortal womb."

I sat up straighter. "I thought you said the Scion was unkillable."

She nodded sagely. "And he will be, once he's born and freed from his dependence on your body. But I've told you before that you yourself can be killed. If you die while pregnant, he'll die with you."

"Thank God I'm only pregnant for a little while longer."

"Thank no one, cousin. Not until he's safely with us. I strongly recommend you remain in this house until that time. Take no chances."

"I'm very careful, Claudine. Eric is almost always with me. He never leaves my side except when royal duties demand it. If we're going to reap the protection of the Authority, he needs to keep up his kingly appearances. Tonight he has to meet with several vampire factions, one of them is the Magister."

She looked surprised again. "The Magister? I understood him to be dead."

I shook my head. "Dead, mopped up, and replaced. The new Magister was recently promoted. He asked Eric to become king of Louisiana and Mississippi the same night as his own announcement. He seems nice enough. He even knows a little bit about us, not that we told him anything. Okalo Massawa."

The second the name left my lips, the air turned freezing in a flash.

Claudine had popped from three feet in front of me to practically sitting in my lap, her hands digging painfully into my shoulders as she shook uncontrollably. The cool, disinterestedness was gone. The interest in small talk was gone. My wise and ancient kinswoman had vanished. A banshee had taken her place.

"Massawa," she hissed, looking wild with fear. "Massawa has seen you? He _knows_ you?"

I gasped as frost filled my lungs. I coughed, pushing at her as tears filled my frozen eyes. "Claudine!" I hissed right back. "Get offa me! What the hell is wrong with you?"

She shook me hard. "The Magister!" she screeched. "Massawa! Tell me he's never seen you!"

"Let go!" We struggled hard against each other. The bar stool was knocked out from under me and I fought hard to bear up under her grip. "What the fuck, Claudine! Stop it!"

"_HAS HE SEEN YOU_?!"

"_YES! FUCKING YES, OKAY?! HE CAME TO THE BAR RIGHT AFTER I BONDED TO ERIC_! _HE KNOWS I'M A FAIRY! HE KNOWS-,_"

Claudine cried out hysterically. Her hands shot to my wrists. The air changed again, this time swirling into the open aperture that signaled a leap to Faery.

"NO!" I screamed, no longer pushing her away but actively fighting her. "Don't! No! No! No! NOOOOOO!"

The swirling hole ignored me and swallowed us both.

For an endless second, we fell. That horribly familiar feeling of moving through space and time engulfed me.

On instinct, I clutched my stomach, curling into a protective ball as I braced for impact.

By some mercy, wherever we popped out, I landed gently.

My belly was perfectly fine. Adam was safe.

I barely registered the grass beneath my hunched position before a pain like I'd never experienced speared into my body.

"FUCK!" I screamed, clutching my head in agony. It hurt so bad that I instantly prayed for my skull to burst and release the pressure. But no, the pain was in my chest. No, my arms. My legs. My back. My lungs filled with air and it felt like I'd inhaled fire. I screamed again as tears pricked my eyes. I writhed on the ground. Every position felt like agony. Every cell in my body was poisoned.

Eric. My entire being convulsed in sorrow without Eric. An invisible noose clenched my chest, dragging me into the ground, wanting to propel me in every direction as it tried to seek him out, but not knowing which way to go.

I felt a gentle hand on my back. I yelped in pain and lurched away, my face pressed in the grass, my eyes shut tight as I tried not to vomit.

"It's the bond," Claudine's now infinitely calmer voice explained. "Try to breathe."

"FUCK YOU!" I shouted, pulling my knees into my chest, only to release them again as it made the pain in my belly explode. "TAKE ME BACK! IT'S KILLING ME!"

"It'll pass, Sookie. Your Radia is commanding you to return to your mate and the vampire's blood is rebelling against the distance between you. It must be very painful."

"FUCK FUCK _FUCK_ YOU!"

"Try to relax."

I cried like my heart was breaking. It _was_ breaking. It continued to pump the acid that was my blood and treacherously delivered it to every vein in my body. If I'd been a vampire, I would have sworn I'd been injected with liquid silver.

"Take me back," I moaned again. I opened my eyes, but I saw nothing. I was blind with pain. "I'm dying, Claudine. I need Eric. PLEASE!"

"I can't," she sighed regretfully. "Not if Massawa knows about you. We're lucky you're alive at all."

I didn't really hear her. I coughed and gagged, finally retching as I could no longer handle the thousand nails puncturing my stomach.

I felt her patiently waiting by my side with her pity and understanding, that monstrous bitch. As soon as I could stand without passing out, I would kill her.

The air felt like mustard gas against my skin, but I drew a huge breath, my lungs demanding and terrified of it at the same time. The smell of cookies was awaiting me, no doubt. When I could finally open my eyes, I'd see golden, Bedazzled shit everywhere. Only this time, the queen and Claudine would probably keep me here forever. Even a few days, and my world would age and move on without me. Eric would die in weeks, if not from the same pain I was feeling, then from starvation since he couldn't drink any blood but mine.

This was the cruelest punishment imaginable. And my own people were the cause.

I hardly noticed that I didn't smell cookies, or that my surroundings disturbingly lacked color of any kind, when I looked up at her with murderous intent burning in my eyes. "Fuck you. Fuck Mab. Fuck whatever it is you plan to do with me. Take me to Eric, or I'll kill you myself."

I felt her enter my head, skimming my thoughts as if she were reading ticker tape. The light, tickling pressure felt like ax blades.

"_Get out!_"

"Mab is not here, Sookie. No one is here. I haven't brought you to Faery. I've brought you to the only place that's safe."

"Liar," I croaked, spitting out bile as it clogged in my mouth. "This isn't safe. Eric's safe. The only safe for me. This is Hell."

"Breathe," she instructed like a bitch who didn't realize she was dead. "When you're stronger, I'll explain."

"EXPLAIN NOW!" I roared, then fell face-first into the grass again, heaving. "There's no time to wait! Eric will die without me! Tell me what the fuck I'm doing here, then bring me Eric! BRING ME ERIC!"

Tears exploded down my cheeks, enough to kill the grass beneath them with salt poisoning.

She did nothing. She was going to wait me out.

I sputtered, trying to swallow instead of gag and puke. I felt tortured, but tried to push it down. I needed to try and gather myself enough to talk calmly. She wasn't going to budge until I did.

With the image of Eric's Sookie smile and the memory of Adam's heartbeat firmly in my mind, I drew another horrible breath and tried to rise above the pain. It pushed back. I gasped, gritting my teeth, and pushed back harder.

For_ them_, I had to be strong. For_ them_, I needed to get my shit together and figure out a way to get back. Claudine wasn't going to play ball. I needed to follow my Chosen's example. Eric would ignore this agony and _think_.

_I needed to think_.

I took another breath. And another. I drew them through my nose, looking for cookies. I found nothing. Nothing. Only a strange, sterile stuffiness. Not even the grass under my nose had a scent. I moved myself carefully, eyes shut and breathing slowly, until I was sitting on my butt.

I opened my eyes and made them stay that way. Willing myself not to be sick again, I forced myself to process my surroundings.

Claudine stood by my side, love welling in her eyes.

With as much accuracy as I could muster, I spat at her feet. Direct hit.

She made a face of disgust and I was glad.

I made my eyes focus beyond her.

Yes, I was technically outside. There was a dim, silver sky above me. And all around me, about one hundred yards away, in every direction, and fifty feet high, was one enormous, curving wall. It was a massive structure, circling all around us, as if we were in the heart of the Colosseum. Despite my anguish, I was beset by wonder. The wall around us was not filled with seats. It was filled with books. We were in the largest, strangest, outdoor library that I'd ever seen. The individual texts were too far away to make out, but I could tell by the sheer volume that there were thousands. Tens of thousands.

I dropped my head again, shutting my eyes against such a peculiar sight. It hurt my already splitting head.

"Tell me where I am," I rasped darkly.

Claudine sighed, the sound of strained pleasure that I'd finally used my indoor voice. Carefully, she lowered and sat next to me.

"This place has no name," she answered quietly.

I looked up and found her gazing around the wall with vacant pride. She looked back at me. "I simply call it The Seam."

"The Seam?"

"The small strip of nowhere between Faery and your world."

"How can it be nowhere? I can see it. These books look real enough. We have to be somewhere."

She shook her head slightly. "No. It is literally Nowhere. _Now_ and _here_. It exists in time and space, but only just. It exists only for these," she gestured all around us. "Nothing more."

"What is this place? What are these books for?"

She looked at me wistfully. "I think you already know."

I cracked one eye open and looked at them again. Acres of books. Where no one could find them. I closed it again. "You're a fucking Custos. These are your texts."

"Very good, Sookie."

"Fuck you. What about Eric? How does time move here? Has a year passed back home already?"

She rose her hands gracefully. "No," she assured me. "Time is here as it is there. This realm is not time warped."

"And Eric?" I hissed. "I thought our bond could protect us from people like you. How _dare_ you take me from him like this!"

She looked tired and sad at my words. "Your bond knows I'm trying to help you, not hurt you. I brought you here to protect the Scion, and here you will stay until he's born."

I uttered a horrid animal cry and tried to lurch to my feet, only to fall back down. "No!" I gritted as the world spun all around me. "I can't! That's weeks away! I need Eric! _I NEED HIM_!"

"And it pains me, cousin, but I cannot take you back. Massawa-,"

"Fuck Massawa!" I shouted.

"Fuck him, indeed. You have no idea-,"

"I have every idea! You're the fucking Custos of Crazy and you're taking me home right now!"

She rose to her feet, her Light swirling around her, the only thing with color in this drab world. Her eyes glinted with power and a growing fury.

"I'm the fucking Custos of Magic!" she shouted down at me. I moaned as the volume beat into my broken ears. She leaned down, cupping my cheek and forcing her eyes into mine.

"And you're not going back. The Custos of War has found you."

...

...

**True Blood Plot Holes- Apparently Bigger is Better **

**1) Remember when Sookie, Jason, Claude and the other fairies went to the bridge and relived her parents dying? She saw Warlow kill them, then dive into the backseat, hungry for blood and finding a Band Aid. NOW we're shown that her parents put her in the car, intent on drowning her. First off, where the fuck was Sookie in that flashback?! The trunk? She wasn't in the backseat, that's for damn sure. Second, if Warlow was saving her life, why the fuck did he get distracted by a Band Aid when the actual girl was somewhere in the car? Third, why did Claudine blast him into another dimension when he was trying to save her? Why didn't CLAUDINE try to save her, given her previous speech about always looking out for her? Stupid writers...**

**2) The contract giving Sookie to Warlow from the 1700s. Warlow keeps insisting that he and Sookie were meant to be together. That, essentially, he's been waiting his whole life for her. If that's true, why didn't the contract specify her name and date he planned to collect? Why did he ask for just "the first fae-bearing female" in the Stackhouse line? Why not, "I'll be taking one Miss Sookie Stackhouse of Hummingbird Lane. She's my soulmate, see? So I already know her name and everything about her. I'll prolly collect around 2013 or so. We'll see how my schedule's looking. Signed, Warlow". **

**3) Sookie moaning to Eric that there's nowhere she can hide from Billith because she's had his blood. Hence, he'll be able to track her for the rest of her life. Two. Days. Later. She bites Warlow and drinks his blood. The stranger who informed her that he's here to pick her up like a rental car, and she drank his damn blood. Sometimes the saying "stupid is as stupid does" just doesn't cover it. **

**4) Sookie pouting that nobody loves her. Sam doesn't (WTF does SHE care?). Bill doesn't (thank fuck). Her parents didn't. And Jason's busy getting fang raped and unable to answer his phone. (Question: Why didn't Jessica just tell that #1 chick vampire that Jason was Hers? That ALWAYS worked in the past, the unbreakable vampire code. God, this show pisses me off.) Anyway, so Sookie, rather than calling Eric, the only rational person who STILL loves her, she snottily tells her dead folks that she's running off to become a fairy vampire bride to spite them. Soooooo, rather than letting Eric turn her, whom she loves and vice versa, she's gonna let some random weirdo who needs to be tied up around her (Again, WTF? No other vampire needed that.) do it. **

**To quote a wise young man, "You're KILLIN' me, Smalls!"**


	48. Chapter 48

**A/N: I'll admit it, this chapter is probably the hardest, scariest one I've had to write. I'm so afraid for our couple, even though I control every word. I fear where my muse will insist I go. She's got me a gunpoint now. Eric's POV.**

Massawa had insisted we meet early.

Otherwise, I would have stayed wrapped in Sookie at the house and simply ignored Fangtasia and the appearance I was due to put in. My inbox was littered with Pam's emails, heavy with lists of people that had come to see me whom she'd had to turn away. No one of significance, of course, mostly vampire residents who required mediation over disputes, blessings for businesses they planned to open, and the more piddly shit that the Sheriff of Area Five would deal with on top of two monarchs rolled into one.

I needed to get off my ass and just name Pam the new sheriff. I barely had time for royal matters and even less patience for them. Sheriff business ranked last on my list, which meant it got practically zero attention.

I would ask her tonight when we had a moment alone. There was a good possibility she would refuse, given her laziness and low tolerance for civic bullshit, but there was an equally good possibility that I would order her to take the job. With Sookie so thoroughly attached to the area, I would be operating as king in Area Five, which meant I needed a local sheriff I trusted who didn't give me hemorrhoids. That was a short fucking list of candidates.

The night air felt warm and heavy as I shot through the sky. My clothing whipped harshly against my skin from the high speed. I'd been using my cars less and less in the last month. I found my separation from Sookie, even for a few hours, to be so trying that concentrating on speed limits had become intolerable. Flying was faster, and I didn't have the confines of a vehicle to add to the sensation of being trapped and unable to get to her quickly. Out here I was free. And I was fast.

I landed in my parking lot. It was empty, save for one car that belonged to a waitress in a bar across the street. She'd been polite enough to ask me last year if I minded. She worried about thieves and rapists in the dark, isolated lot behind her work, and figured no carjacker would risk stealing a car in my well-lit space, especially if that car might belong to a vampire. I'd given my permission. Humans who asked vampires for help regarding their safety always piqued my interest. They were not afraid of us on principle. This woman was especially astute, using _other_ people's fear of us to protect her property. Respecting her trust in us, I'd painted a VIP stencil in a space just for her. She'd laughed. The next night, she'd come into Fangtasia and handed me a picture drawn in crayon by a small child's hand. The picture was of a beach on a bright, sunny day, little stick figures playing with crude shovels and pails. One of the stick figures had fangs.

"From my daughter," she explained. "As a thank-you for my parking space. I asked what we should get you for a present, and she said you probably missed days on the beach."

I had missed them, as a matter of fact. I hadn't yet seen a beach since Sookie had Chosen me. I thanked her. And the sight of her car always made me think of the picture, which hung in my office.

I walked alongside it to go through the back entrance.

Ginger was setting up tables and nearly broke her kneecaps as she fell tactlessly to the floor. She gave me a painful, flirty smile. "Master," she purred at me, her head dropping in what she probably saw on tv as a studied, graceful greeting for royalty. Fucking BBC and their period drama.

"I've told you before, Ginger, this isn't high court. Get off your ass and set up. I'm not paying you to simper and scrape."

Disappointment flashed across her features and she lowered her head further, hiding her painted face. She got to her feet and quickly continued with lifting the chairs off the tables and righting them on the floor. I honestly had no idea how many times she planned to set herself up for such humiliating rejections. She seemed to have a very selective memory about just how many had come before. Every night she presented herself to me like a red-assed baboon and every night I made my disgust quite clear. I'd fed from her once in desperation for human blood, and never had I touched that bleached scarecrow sexually. And yet, her hope sprang eternal. She'd regroup, come to work the next evening in a sluttier outfit than before, slather on another layer of make-up, and try try again, looking for that magical combination of skin and rouge that broke the spell and made me want her. I shook my head in resignation. She adored vampires and knew how to mix a decent mojito. In the service industry in the Deep South, that was another short fucking list. So I kept her and put up with the mawkish offers of pussy and blood.

I found Pam on the phone in my chair, red stiletto boots crossed and propped on my desk. She stared at the ceiling while she put in our extensive stock reorder from memory. Her fingers played with the ends of her long, dagger nails that gleamed the same color of her boots. When she finished, she hung up and looked at me expectantly.

"As I don't live and breathe, the king of Louisiana." She bowed her head deep with the same irritating, obsequious deference that she knew I hated. "My goodness, sire, what could possibly bring you to our humble digs? Slumming? Surely a grand patriarch like yourself has far more important things to be doing with your limited time than visiting a dive of our sordid reputation-,"

"Go ahead, get it all out."

"Oh, and you absolutely _must_ forgive the proprietor for not being here to blow you personally. He's been extremely delinquent in his duties lately. If you ask me, it's because of his new hobby. He's become an apiarist, you see. Don't ask me why, I fucking hate bees, but I believe he's becoming addicted to his product. He's never around because he's drinking and fucking his honey all day while his businesses turn to shit-,"

"_Enough_." Riding me was one thing. She wasn't allowed to demean Sookie.

"But _sire_," she oozed in contempt. "I'm simply explaining why I'm up to my tits in backlog and can't offer you proper hospitality since my asshole of a boss and maker can't find his way out of a honeycomb cunt long enough to answer emails or gladhand the occasional VIP. I'm starting to worry that he's actually mired in the sweet, sticky shit like it was his own personal La Brea tar pit. He fell dick-first and now his bones will be on display for all eternity as a cautionary tale. I'm sure he struggled against its hold, but honestly, when honey's got you by the dick, your options are limited. Speaking of bees," she finally let her facade drop to confront me, "which one stung _your_ ass to finally get you in here? Fuck knows it wasn't me. What's one more message on top of three hundred and twenty-nine?"

"If it makes you feel any better, you're being promoted. Welcome to the shit, Louisiana Sheriff of Area Five."

She pushed her feet off the desk and propelled the chair backwards as if shit were actually creeping towards her. "Fuck. No. I wouldn't touch that bureaucratic equivalent of VD with _your_ hands. I'm done with this, Eric. If you can't be bothered to play with me anymore, then I'll just take my ball and go home. You are NOT saddling me with this inbred steakhouse of an area. I'll go traveling again, like I did in the forties. I hear Argentina is the new Monaco. You can stay here and continue trying to break your dick off in Sookie. I'll leave as soon as you find a manager for this place."

"Sookie is pregnant. The child is mine. Her Light has revived me enough to make it possible." I stared hard at her. "_My heart to yours_," I offered her in the Norse words of congratulations. "You're an aunt."

"A new manager won't be _that_ bad."

"I'm serious, Pam-,"

"_I'm_ serious, Eric. I'm done, I tell you. People think you coddle me anyway. I love you. I'm glad you're happy. But this business isn't fun without you. If you've outgrown it, then I'll pack my bindle and be on my way. Consider this my petition to my king to leave the state and pursue redder pastures."

She spoke calmly and her words made sense, but I could feel a deep sorrow that she tried to lock down and away from my bond with her. She felt abandoned. Like I hadn't had the decency to free her, I'd just wandered away at the sight of something shiny. I didn't blame her. I _had_ abandoned her for something shiny.

As I reached for my wallet, I couldn't help but bark with laughter. "Bindle, my ass. You're the only woman in the last hundred years who isn't Liz Taylor who travels _en valet_."

I pulled out the photo I'd tucked in there an hour before and offered it to her. "You can't leave, Pam. I need my second. Trouble is coming and I want _all_ of my family close."

She leaned over the desk and took the picture from me. "What the fuck am I looking at?"

"A child," I repeated. "My son. Ludwig says that Sookie's fairy genes have accelerated her pregnancy and she is now equal to six months along."

Her eyes drilled into the photo, the smugness leaving her expression as she gazed at the image, understanding dawning. "So you're a prop comic now?" she asked quietly.

I shook my head. "This is real. _He's_ real. I've held him between my hands and listened to his heart. I've smelled him. He smells of Sweden in spring, before the Industrial Revolution and perhaps even before my time. And the fairies have confirmed it. Somehow, a human-fairy and a vampire have made life. Now they're certain it's the sign of the end of the world. Or the eve of a glorious revolution, depending on which of those indecisive ballerinas you talk to. It's enough to worry all of them, and they can't tell me who else knows of this prophesy or what they might do to stop it."

Her ruby lips parted slightly, eyes wide as she slowly extended the photo back to me. "You _are_ serious."

I took it, rehoused it, and pocketed my wallet. "Perfectly."

"Do I get to say I told you so for falling dick-first into honey like I warned you shouldn't? I knew being yours would make Sookie more trouble than she already was, but Armageddon? Honestly. You'd think she'd be taller, if she's that damn important. Perhaps once society bites it and books are burned for warmth, the illiterate survivors can boost her a few inches in their songs. Maybe give her a blue ox."

"You're just precious, darling. And your petition is denied. You'll be here when my son is born and you'll stand with me to protect him from whatever shit the fairies or anyone else decides to bring to our door. Yes?"

When she bowed this time, she did it with a conviction that erased my previous displeasure. "Yes," she confirmed. "And I... I'm... amazed by your news. And pleased. I hope a child with Sookie brings you joy." She rolled her tongue in her mouth, unused to the taste of sincerity. "Do we have any ideas about who would wish him harm? Are you giving me an execution order?"

I quickly explained about the tome and what the fairies had told us. I threw in the information about Ludwig and her belief that Claudine might be a Custos. She listened intently. Oblivious, I sat in the chair opposite her, uncaring of how it appeared to anyone who walked in that she'd taken my seat.

"The fairy queen is even more squirrelly and useless than I would have imagined. If she knows who would act against us, she isn't talking. She simply said the Coming meant a great shift in the supernatural world and the Scion was of the most powerful magic on earth. We might all be killed. We might all win the PowerBall Lotto. None of them knew, but she was sure that other supes in the know would assume the worst."

"In other words, kill Sookie before the Scion is born and avert the Coming?"

"Correct."

"Jesus, Eric."

"I know."

She clasped her hands together and put her elbows on the desk, her eyes going blank as she began to plot. Now, and many times in the past, I silently thanked Pam for forcing my hand to turn her. She had a brilliant mind for war.

"Do you know anything else about these Custos people? Sounds like bullshit to me."

"Outside of the legend, no. I've only heard stories. Ludwig might be full of shit, but her knowledge of Sookie's kind would suggest she's privy to some insider knowledge, just as her knowledge of Claudine is equally suspicious. I can't discount their existence."

"Are they powerful? Could we contact them somehow? Use them for our cause?"

"I don't know, however I understand from the stories that the Keep tasked them with surveillance and record-keeping only. Outside of watching history, they do not interfere."

"Shit," she drawled. "Hippie, draft-dodging fuckers. What about the Authority? The whole reason you agreed to be king was so you could call on their army in case Sookie was threatened. This abso-fuckin'-lutely counts. Will you play that card?"

I sat back in that uncomfortable chair and mused. "Until I have a better idea of _who_ is threatening her, no. The Authority won't just hand me an army. They'll want a reason. I can't go on record as saying that fairies are most definitely real and are declaring that I'm married to one of their own and father to the anti-Christ. The Council will raze this state into the sea looking for them. Massawa won't be able to quell their desire for the finest blood in existence simply as a favor to me. I doubt they'll give a fuck about the prophesy, but if it's true, and if other ancient supes are aware of it, then chances are good that they're in high places... like the Authority. We could end up with a fairy war on one hand and the extermination of Sookie, our son, me, you, probably everyone we've ever known on the other, just to eliminate the threat."

"I just had my nails done, Eric."

"I apologize in advance when you chip them in someone's eye socket."

"Fuuuuuuck," she breathed out. Despite her slitted eyes and pissy expression, I detected a glimmer of excitement. "Massawa's going to be here in half an hour. What's on the agenda?"

"Saints stats."

"Fuck you."

"He's part of the AVL entourage as they tour the states garnering public support for vampire equal rights. Midterm elections are in three months and the AVL is gunning for a more fang-friendly Senate race. They're pushing hard in the red states. Louisiana and Mississippi couldn't get any redder."

"So you're going to gab about human politics?"

"And what I should be doing at the state level to help further the cause, yes. I'm a very big deal, Pam."

"Save it for your memoirs, you vainglorious prick."

To prove I wasn't above rough housing with my Child, I shot across the desk and tossed her across the room. She landed perfectly upright next to the door, skidding on her high heels and hissing though her smile.

"Out of daddy's chair. He has work."

"Don't forget the liquor tax increase comes into effect next month. You'll need to recalibrate our booze budget, if you still care about profit margins."

"No. I'm busy. Teach Jessica. I want that girl to learn how to squeeze a nickel until the buffalo shits itself."

A few parting shots about my newfound habit of collecting women who needed babysitters, and she slammed the door behind her.

As a reward to her steadfast, though bratty loyalty, I sat down and rapidly answered every last email she'd sent me. Another email from Herveaux & Son informed me that my new home was nearing completion. I'd hired the company through one of my real estate fronts. Alcide had no idea he was building a mansion for me and Sookie in the middle of nowhere, nor would he even suspect. There were no light-tight rooms in the blueprints. No strange vaults or hidden rooms. Just lots of windows, a heated pool in an enclosed conservatory, and a jungle gym. No vampire would ever design such a magnet for sun and children. It would still be secure to a presidential degree, but that alone wouldn't raise eyebrows. Rich men always built with the assumptions that the rest of the world was thieving, raping and generally untrustworthy. I gave the job to Herveaux knowing that the man could build a decent house and, even though I hadn't told her, it would make Sookie very happy.

He was now asking for instructions on interior decor. I gathered up the magazines and notes that I'd asked Sookie to assemble, and sealed them up in a FedEx envelope. I replied that he'd receive them the next day. He thanked me, Mr. Kurt Coppersmith, and would start with the finishing touches once my package hit his mailbox. I tossed it on the Outgoing pile.

I opened another email from my accountant.

That was as far as I got.

Shooting pain erupted in my chest.

"FUCK!" I garbled out. Then I lost my ability to speak. White, hot panic that wasn't mine completely engulfed me. I gasped in horror as I felt Sookie fight like an animal. And lose. Our bond reeled wildly in my mind, running its entire length like fishing wire as it zipped at a terrible speed away from me. Sookie was moving. Being moved. Hundreds of miles at a time.

I felt the bond go rigid as it hit its limit, the long wire finally running out, straining against too much pull. It started fraying, the thousand points of connection snapping at a terrifying rate.

And then, just like that, our connection broke. Sookie was gone. Ripped out of my body. Her moods, her thoughts, her happiness that had become so entangled with mine. Nothing could have prepared me for the pain. Having my spine removed would have been a blessing in comparison.

I screamed.

And screamed.

Screaming, so much fucking screaming.

The chair under me disappeared as Sookie's Radia detonated in my chest and threw me to the ground. I clutched at it, groaning in agony as the sunny little ball turned into an ugly black hole. It had been protecting my heart because I'd given it to Sookie. Now that I'd lost her, it was going to swallow my heart whole. Gnawing, tearing, burning, hacking.

Blood exploded out of my eyes and coursed down my cheeks.

I roared again, only to cough up a river of blood.

I fought savagely against this onslaught and tried to tap my blood in Sookie, ripping my own brain apart as I tried to pinpoint her location. I had no idea what was happening, but the action required was clear. I had to get to her. Now. Right fucking now.

Something a million times worse than a werewolf kidnapping had befallen her. This pain in me, this unnatural separation, my mind leapt to the most obvious conclusion.

"NO!" I bellowed around the blood in my mouth. "_NOOOOO!_"

_Dead_, a tiny voice whispered amid the internal chaos. _She's dead dead dead dead dead. You left her. You left you son. And they got her. They cut her. Broke her arms and legs. Broke her beautiful neck. Cut out Adam to take back as proof that the Scion is gone. Wrote you a thank-you note in her blood. They're dead. You failed them_.

A stake. I needed a stake. The sun had set two hours ago and I couldn't wait that long for dawn. Now that Sookie was gone and her Radia was punishing me, I would have gladly walked outside and met it, but there was no time. I needed death much sooner than that.

I tried to push up onto my hands and knees.

I retched again, collapsing under my own weight.

My chair sat upended a few feet away, its four wooden legs sticking out towards me in what was clearly a sign.

I just had to reach them. Break one off. Find the strength to impale myself. Find her in the afterlife. I had no doubts that I would, even though it was filled with billions of souls. I simply had to find the prettiest angel of them all.

Spending everything I had, I propelled myself those three feet. Gasping, moaning, I grabbed a leg and snapped it off. I had to hurry. My eyesight was dimming. My chest was melting from the inside out. I was dying anyway, but not fast enough.

I held the splintered end to my chest, gripping the leg with weak, bloodied fingers.

Just one hard push. That was all I needed.

I grit my teeth and put my last ounce of concentration into not missing. I didn't think once about my true death. It was nothing. A speed bump. A minor inconvenience that was in my way to get to Sookie. A thousand years of life, and suddenly I couldn't wait to leave fast enough. I'd already died seven seconds ago when I felt Sookie leave me, and it had already felt like years.

I braced myself. I pushed hard, breaking the skin and piercing an inch of flesh. _Yes._ Victory was near.

The door to my office blasted open. I roared over someone's cry of anguish, a rush of air, and my suddenly empty hand over my heart.

"NOOOO!" I screamed again, falling back, smashing my head against the concrete.

A blur of long blonde hair fell over my face.

"Eric! Jesus, _ERIC_!"

"Sookie." My eyes failed me. I reached up and fingered a tress then reached for her face. I couldn't see it. Was I dead already? Had I found her this easily? My fingers found her cheek.

Cold as stone.

My Sookie was warm. Even in death, I knew she'd be warm.

That Radia really was a mean-streaked bitch.

Blackness took me.


	49. Chapter 49

**A/N: So we've come to the end of True Blood S6. Don't even get me started. Sookie's POV**

For reasons that Ludwig had never been able to unearth, I now healed quickly. Just like a vampire.

Ever since we first noticed it that night in Eric's office, I no longer bruised during sex and his bites zipped up like magic. I hadn't been injured more seriously, other than those little owies. Until now, of course.

I assumed that was why I was able to bear up under the pain of being separated from Eric after about an hour. Not that it was easy. Not that it had gone away. I was simply getting used to the agony of my Radia's call going unanswered. Just like I was getting used to Eric's blood spinning like a top in my bloodstream, looking for my true north without any luck. I could feel its needle swirling wildly as it searched, desperate to locate its master and compel me to find him once it had a direction, but the leap into The Seam had broken it. Like a panicked animal, it paced just under my skin. Another hour and it might decide to just pour through my sweat glands and continue its search without me, if I was just going to sit here and be sick.

I couldn't bear the thought. I silently begged it to calm down.

I continued to breathe through my nose, trying not to puke again. I looked around my colorless prison, trying to memorize every detail. I wasn't completely sure why I felt the need. Nothing about this library from Hell struck me as useful. Maybe it's what I thought Eric would do. Thinking about him, I asked myself to consider what _exactly_ he would do in my situation.

Simple. If Eric were a telepathic fairy captive, he'd rip into the brain of his captor and steal every thought he found in the hopes of learning what the hell they wanted from him and how to escape.

Claudine was sitting at my side, waiting for the sickness of my separation from my Chosen to pass. Looking into her wan expression, I threw myself into her head, desperately hoping that I'd catch her thinking about the exit.

I needed out of here. I wouldn't last a long weekend without Eric.

But of course, she felt my intrusion. I plunged into the endless museum of her thoughts, seeing flashes of memory and color in every direction. With a sad little smile, Claudine simply wiped them clean. A world of white took the museum's place. I fell into a paint bucket of the stuff. Thick, soupy, completely blank, the white pressed back into my head, filling my nose and making me feel claustrophobic. I tried to swim through it, looking for the little handfuls of thoughts I'd seen seconds before, but they were gone.

There was nothing. And it stayed that way.

Even people who knew about my ability and tried to_ think_ of nothing couldn't elude me this effectively. They always cracked and thought of _something_, their brain too undisciplined to stop itself. But of course, Claudine wasn't people. Claudine was fairy. She'd been raised for thousands of years amongst others with the same ability. She knew how to mask her mind. She knew how to thwart trespassers. She was a ninja of the brain.

I was twenty-six years old, raised around plain old humans who had no idea I'd crept into their minds and stolen their thoughts. I'd never had to pit myself against another telepath, let alone an ancient Custos.

To a gun party, I didn't even have the wherewithal to bring a knife. I'd brought a spork.

She patted my shoulder. My pathetic attempts at espionage were being excused. Bitch.

I extracted myself from her. I was too weak to do much else.

On the gray grass under the gray sky, I looked at my warden and finally felt ready to talk.

"Do you have the power to see the real world from here? Is he okay?" I asked calmly.

She sat straighter, her eyes losing focus as she presumably looked somewhere else.

"Yes," she answered. "I can see him. He's in pain. His people are helping him." Her expression hardened, her lip curling up. "Massawa is near. The others want to take Eric somewhere safe while they try to figure out what is wrong."

"You're telling me that Massawa wants me dead, then you cripple my Chosen and leave him in his path like a hobbled sheep? What the fuck, Claudine?" My voice was still hoarse.

Her eyes didn't focus on me. "There was no time, Sookie. Massawa is too dangerous. I couldn't leave your safety in the hands of a vampire a fourth of his age. Nor could I take you to Mab. She's still wary of the prophesy and its repercussions. Besides, vampires can breach our land if they drink Fae blood."

"But not here?"

She shook her head. "Not here. Not even fairies know of The Seam. I found it, many years ago, and began using it to house my tomes. It was the perfect place. Almost every ancient library in the world has been sacked, burned, pillaged. Even the other Custos have lost some of their volumes. Not mine. Mine are pristine. I've even tried to bring other species of people here to see what this world would do to them, so I could plan for any possible invasion."

"And?"

"After the leap, they perished. This world cannot support non-Fae."

"Even vampires?"

She looked at me and answered without words.

Fuck. That meant Eric couldn't break onto this plane, nor could Claudine simply bring him over. I was on my own.

Trying not to think too loudly and risk her hearing my plotting, I gazed out at the pointlessness of a library no one would ever see. "What about Sophie Anne? She had one of your books. Not only that, she could read it. Ludwig said no one could read Custos texts unless the magic in the book allowed them to. Why the hell would a Fae book let not one but _THREE_ vampires read it?"

The atmosphere went sheepish around her as she looked at the ground, her face reddening. "A mistake. I have no idea how she stole one of my books. She's certainly never been in The Seam. That tome must have slipped through this dimension somehow and ended up in her hands. I don't know. But no others are missing, that I can vouch. As for the vampires reading it, my books only need to detect Fae blood in the reader and the text will appear. Sophie Anne had Hadley's. Bill and Eric had yours. It was enough to let them see."

"You might want to add another layer of security to them, Napoleon. I think I've spotted a loophole."

"It was never a problem until the Stackhouse women started spreading their legs for every pair of fangs they met," she replied.

"Fuck you. My romantic relationships and your shitty defense system should have nothing to do with each other. Maybe you should ask the Custos of War for tips on how to protect your stupid books better."

We pointedly looked away from each other, pissed off.

I didn't speak until I felt calm again.

"You can't just keep me here, Claudine," I insisted quietly. "I need Eric. I need Ludwig. I need food and a bed and a toilet and my new clothes. Too much could go wrong. What happens when Eric dies of starvation? Or if Massawa kills him and my Radia is snuffed out? Eric dies, Sookie dies, remember? Or what happens when something goes wrong with my pregnancy? If you can't bring me a doctor, I could die then too. And Adam, my son. What's the point of all this if you're risking the Scion's death anyway?"

"I will help your Chosen as much as I can. He won't die from starvation. A vampire his age can abstain from blood for a long time. Months, if necessary. Anything you need, I can conjure for you. I'm the Custos of Magic. They gave me this job for a reason."

She blinked intently, twice. Suddenly there was a glass of water and sandwich on a plate next to my hand. Without thinking, I snatched the glass and drained it before cramming half of the sandwich into my mouth. I felt ravenous. The throb in my body that wanted Eric more than anything wasn't fooled. It accepted the food, but didn't lessen the pain.

I swallowed, then grimaced. "It tastes funny."

"I told you, The Seam barely exists. There are no people aside from us. The plants never grow. No color. No weather. Food will still nourish you, but flavor is a luxury that doesn't translate."

"What else can you make?"

Another three deliberate blinks.

A nicely made bed. A toilet. A wooden wardrobe. They popped into place right beside us, in the middle of our massive book audience.

"You expect me to pee outside?"

"Would you like me to blink a house for you?"

"No. I want you to take me home. To my _actual_ house."

"And I will. With Adam safely tucked in your arms."

The image stung. I saw myself popping back into our bedroom, our baby soon fussing in my arms. Eric was on the bed, bleeding from every orifice, too weak to do anything but lift his head and stare at me with disbelief and anger in his eyes. I'd left him. I'd taken away his child. His heart. And I would work for the next hundred years trying to earn his forgiveness for abandoning him.

A tear slid down my face.

"You have to go back," I broke and cried a little. "If you can't take me, and you can't bring him, then you have to go back and tell him what's happening. He doesn't have a clue. Hell, he might think I'm dead. Go to him and tell him I love him and I'm safe."

I took off my ruby ring and held it out to her. "Tell him I want this back next time I see him."

She hesitated, then reached out and took it from me, slipping it on her own ring finger. "He will kill me, cousin."

"I'll die here if he does. I'll be alone and scared until thirst or hunger take me out. Adam too. Tell him that. He won't touch you."

She nodded, fear prickling her mind so loudly that I could hear it without trying to read her. But she was going to do it. I could hear that too. In my tornado of hatred for her, there was a grain of gratitude.

Grunting, I shifted positions, trying to ease the boiling ache in my chest. It was starting to pressure cook my organs. The pain left me breathless. "You need to tell me about Massawa. I thought the Custos were supposed to just write everything down that happened in history. Why does he want to pitch in the ninth inning all of a sudden? Doesn't that go against the Keep's Prime Directive?"

"Yes," she answered. "We were engaged only to watch our respective genres. I've seen countless displays of magic. People risen from the dead. Dried weeds turned to lush crops, and vice versa. Enemies made lovers. Lovers made stone." She looked at me. "Vampires gifted with daylight and fathering children. I suspect I will write several volumes about you, Sookie. You're excellent job security."

"Glad I can help. The economy being what it is and all." I coughed against the bile clinging to my throat. "You didn't answer me. Why has he - and you - decided to intervene?"

"Massawa is the oldest among us. He was tasked with observing war five hundred years before I was born. Can you imagine the horrors he's seen? The blood, the cruelty, the wanton disregard for life? Even an undead soul who subsists on blood would have his limits."

"Are you saying he's gone crazy?"

She fanned out her long fingers, brushing them lightly against that grass that never grew. "No. I'm saying he's had enough. The atrocities and the bloodshed, followed by stalemate and peace, followed by misunderstandings and tension, followed over again by atrocities and bloodshed. Mortals have no historical memory. They commit the same stupidities as their grandfathers while we immortals are forced to watch. I was lucky. I was assigned to observe the miracles of life. Massawa was a warrior. He was cursed with watching the ugliness that humans never outgrow. Before this century, it was restricted the damage one man could inflict on another. Now..."

She lifted her hand in defeat.

"Now...?" I prodded.

"Now, science has overtaken even magic's power. Weapons do not mean war. They mean an extinction event. For all of us. Massawa nearly went mad during the Cold War, missiles pointed every way but down. They had enough power to destroy the earth eight times over. Can you imagine? And you've been asked by a council that originated in the Bronze Age not to interfere? How Massawa must have wrestled with himself and their antiquated notions of killing. If it wouldn't have sparked a nuclear volley, I'm convinced Massawa would have murdered the Communist and Western leaders within hours of each other, just to end the standoff."

She looked over at me. "How are you feeling?"

"Sawn in half. You?"

She actually chuckled a bit. "Not great, but I'll concede it's nothing compare to you."

I blew out another shaky breath. "I'll never forgive you for this, you know."

"I understand."

"So what? You're saying Massawa believes the Coming is the end of the world and Adam is the first domino? He wants to kill me to stop the ultimate atrocity?"

"Essentially, yes."

"And how do you know that? Was there a staff email where he made his plans known?"

"The Custos have been circling the same world for an age. We see each other in our peripherals. Trip over each other as we gather information. We know each other's methods, our thought processes, our perspectives. Massawa's frustration is no secret. He's made it clear that if the Coming were ever to manifest, he would do everything in his power to stop it."

"Kill the Scion, save the world."

"Yes."

"But you don't agree."

"Massawa's view has been tainted by thousands of gallons of blood. He sees only the death in every great moment in history. The Coming may bring death to some, I will not lie, but I have seen the same great events as Massawa, and very often, their birthing pains are outweighed by their glory. There is magic in this world, Sookie. Like nothing I can describe, though I've tried in every book. And the Scion will put _all_ of it to shame. His birth will be magnificent. The prophesy promises this. Somehow, he will create a better world for our kind. Perhaps all kinds."

Somewhere in our conversation, I'd wrapped my arms around my belly. For all her excitement, I did not want this glory for my son. I didn't want him to be a great historical event. I didn't want her to write reams of magical praise about him. I didn't want him to better the world.

I wanted him to have a swing set. I wanted him to like vegetables. I wanted him to enjoy the aquarium in Monroe. I wanted him to put away his toys when I asked him to. I wanted his first word to be 'daddy'.

_And I wanted his daddy. Here. With me. Now._

I sniffled again, wiping my cheeks.

"Will you go to him now, please? I'm tired. I need to rest."

"Are you agreeing to your stay here until the birth?"

"No. I'm going to fight you every day until the pain makes me throw up again. But there's not much I can do about it, so I guess I'll sit tight for now."

I blinked back more tears and tried to look collected. "You might be right, okay? Maybe Massawa wants to kill me and you're doing me a favor. Maybe two weeks away from Eric is a small price to pay for keeping Adam safe. I don't know. All I know is that Eric needs to know I'm okay. So please... go tell him."

Claudine chewed her lip nervously, then nodded slowly. "To keep him sane, to protect your Light, I'll tell him what I've done."

A relieved burst of air left me. "Thank you," I said. "Please. Hurry."

She rose from her seat, looking down at me with endless kindness. "I'll be back soon. Rest, cousin. When I return, I'll conjure whatever you need to be comfortable during your stay."

"Sounds good." I tried to smile.

She lit up, then popped away.

With my last reserve of energy, I staggered to my feet, stuffing the last of her tastless sandwich into my mouth. Gritting my teeth, I tore the bedsheets off the mattress and hurled them to the ground. I lurched against the wardrobe, sobbing with rage until I'd pushed the fucking thing over and it clattered to the ground, plain clothing jumping out of the drawers like popcorn.

Backhanding my tears, I started my slow, determined march to the books.

Claudine had better have some sort of fucking Dewey Decimal System because I didn't have much time to browse through fifty thousand books. I needed the one she wrote about The Seam. More specifically, the one she wrote about how to fucking _leave_ The Seam.

Her hopes and fears about Adam be damned.

I was getting the hell outta Dodge and going home.

To Eric.


	50. Chapter 50

**A/N: Thanks to everyone who's still with me! I've had a few readers bow out on account of the angst, and I'm very sorry to see them go. It makes me extra grateful to those of you who stick it out. Muchas smoochas to youchas, from ficlit78, your con-kiss-tador. Eric's POV.  
**

The pain I woke up to informed me that I was still alive, to my infinite dismay.

I wasn't warm and wrapped around my woman and son on a fluffy cloud, surrounded by other dead souls as Enya played over their slightly smug serenity.

My skin felt clammy and cold from the cement beneath me. My head felt skewered and my body crushed. I tried to move. I failed.

There were three female voices talking in hushed mutters around me. One young and frightened. One adult and bitchy. One old and dictatorial.

I groaned, trying to open my eyes.

The voices fell silent.

Someone moved closer. I couldn't tell whom. My lips were parted by brusque fingers.

I was given blood. The only kind of blood I was able to drink.

"Sookie..." I muttered hoarsely, finally cracking a blind eye. She was stale and thick, but she was on my tongue. She was feeding me. Thank fuck. She wasn't dead. She wasn't missing. She was by my side and giving me the sweetness that ran in her veins. In the deluge of pain racking my body, a sliver of joy drove hard into its core.

She didn't answer me.

"Angel?" I croaked. I was so happy, I didn't even notice her blood was cold.

"Yes, sugar pie?" the Old Dictator replied dryly.

I winced, rolling the blood on my tongue. It was right, yet it was off. I swallowed, noting how it consoled and confused my system at the same time. My chest erupted with a pleased purr, but my heart was still wrapped in a choke chain. The blood only seemed to anger it. It constricted, the chain biting into the soft tissue. I gasped. Another mouthful of cold blood filled my mouth. I swallowed again. Again, my body rejoiced but my heart cracked wider.

"Please..." I entreated. Perhaps her voice would pacify it. "Tell me you love me."

"Buy a girl a hotdog first, Northman. Maybe send me a mash note once in a while. Then we'll talk," the Old Dictator said.

_This was wrong._

I opened my eyes and made them stay that way. I banished the darkness from them by sheer force of will.

I was on the floor of Fangtasia's basement. I could hear the muffled thump of the music above in the bar. Dr. Ludwig knelt at my side, leaning over me, peering into my face. Jessica stood at the base of the stairs, her eyes darting between me and the entrance above. Pam stood to my left, her arms crossed over her bunched cleavage in her red striped corset that made her look like a circus ringmaster, her expression a cross between rage and terror.

My angel was not here.

"Sookie," I repeated very clearly, my head rolling as I checked every corner of the dank room. I found Jason Stackhouse sitting on a chair under the stairs. He face held the smooth lack of concern that told me he was glamored. A bucket that reeked of cold deep fry sat in his lap.

The doctor popped the top from a vial filled with blood and brought it to my lips. "Yes," she answered me, upending the vial in my mouth. "And this is the last drop of her."

More cold, old blood watered my scorched throat. It wasn't perfect, but it was certainly welcome. "Where did you get her blood?"

"From her appointment this afternoon," she replied. "I planned to run more tests with it, until your magician's assistant over there called me and told me about your fit. I brought them in case you needed smelling salts."

I fell back in defeat.

"She's dead then. You should have let me end myself."

Pam let out an angry hiss and Ludwig clucked her tongue at me in annoyance. She dug in her medical bag and pulled out a pen flashlight, clicking it on and shining it into my face.

I shut my eyes against the brightness, which tortured my head further. "Don't be stupid. You know vampire pupils don't dilate against light."

She smacked my forehead lightly with it, then clicked it off and put it away. "Right, only for blood and fucking. It should burn like a bitch, though."

"What?"

"Sookie is fine, Eric. I don't know what the hell is going on, but she is most certainly not dead."

"I felt it. My body is melting. Her Radia is killing me."

"I'm sure it's pissed off, but that's a good sign. The fact that you feel it at all proves it hasn't extinguished, which it would have if Sookie had died. Your skin is still warm. And my UV flashlight didn't affect you. Ipso facto, Sookie's alive."

She knew about my UV immunity. I glared at Pam. She returned my anger, lifting a brow in defiance. I didn't question just what else she'd told the doctor, not when Jessica was within earshot. Later, Pam and I would have words about discretion.

"Then where is she?"

Ludwig looked over her shoulder at Pam.

Pam, in turn, turned to stare at Jessica.

Jessica looked back at all of us like a panicked deer. "Pam sent me to your house to find her. I found Jason at the gate leaving Sookie a bunch of messages on the phone, since she wasn't answerin' his calls. I didn't know what to tell him, so I glamored him and went inside to look and-,"

"You gave her my security codes as well?"

"Kiss my vage, Stabby Hayes."

I rolled my eyes, then twirled my finger at Jessica. "And...?"

Jessica looked like a child watching her parents fight. "And...nothing. I'm so sorry, Eric. I looked everywhere, I really did. Sookie had cooked, the mashed potatoes were still in the pot. There were exploded beer bottles in the freezer that were leaking out. And I smelled her adrenaline in the kitchen. She didn't just walk out the front door. I smelled someone else too, someone amazing. Like, Lucky Charms magically delicious amazing. Anyway, I tried to follow their scents, but they didn't go anywhere. I checked every room and the whole yard. She was just... gone."

With great effort, I dragged myself into a sitting position. For all her anger, Pam flashed my side in an instant, shouldering into me, offering her support. I took it. I was too weak to refuse.

I snapped my fingers at Jason. "Bring him here."

Jessica gently took his bucket away and set it aside before she led him to me and asked him to sit. My heart howled in anguish as he looked into my face with two familiar, dark brown eyes. Fucking genetics. I dragged him into my will more roughly than I should have.

"Where is Sookie?" I barked at him.

His head swung slowly back and forth. "I dunno, man. She called me over for dinner. Said she wanted to talk about stuff. I showed up to the address she gave me, but no one answered the intercom. I figured she gave me the wrong street number or somethin'. Hey, do you want some chicken?" He turned to look longingly at the bucket on the floor.

I snapped in his face and dragged him back again. "What else did she say? Did she mention the fairy?"

"Who?"

"Claudine."

"She a friend of Jenna Jameson?"

"Fuck. What time did Sookie call you?"

He casually reached into his front pocket. "Lemme check."

I snatched his phone from his hand and checked myself. Sookie's call and text were the last two interactions, forty-six minutes ago.

_Is that all it had been? _

Jessica hopped from one foot to the other, chewing her nail. "Is it okay that I brought him? I didn't know what else to-,"

"It's fine," I rasped, waving Jason back to her care. She took his arm and whisperingly led him back to his seat.

Pam watched impassively. "You should feed from him. Or someone from upstairs, if you'd rather. You vomited three pints at least."

"I can't."

"I'm sure Sookie would understand, plus you don't even have to wake him to get him to-,"

"I _can't_, Pamela. The Fae bond prevents me from feeding on anyone who isn't _my_ fairy."

She flinched like I'd slapped her. "Are you fucking kidding? Then what the fuck are we supposed to-,"

"Find her. Find that bitch who popped into my kitchen, make her take me to Sookie, then rip her throat open until she dispenses Pez."

"Her fairy kin? They took her?"

"And you'll get your very own fairy to play with, just like you always wanted. Once I'm done with her."

Ludwig cleared her throat on my other side. I'd momentarily forgotten about her.

"Stop talking about murder in front of me, you dumb shits." She grabbed my hand by the pinkie, which she stuck into the bloody vial, then pulled it out and offered it to me. "Waste not."

I stuck my finger in my mouth and sucked it clean.

"How do you feel?" She did the same thing with one of the other empty vials. Again, I sucked the blood off.

"Like you harvested my organs and replaced them with broken bottles."

"Graphic. The good news is that as far as I can tell, there's nothing physically wrong with you," she took the now-clean vials and made to put them in her bag. I grabbed them from her. In those tubes were the tiniest pieces of my woman.

"And here I thought you were a fucking _doctor,_" I spat. Pam offered me a cloth for my bloody face, which I used. No point looking like the hot mess I was.

The crone had the balls to look bored with me. "You vomited, but that's all. Everything else appears normal. The pain you're feeling is intangible, caused by the your separation with Sookie. Gallen saw several examples of separated Fae mates. They suffered, but they lived. The pain was meant to compel them back together, not kill them."

"It works. I can't think of anything else but finding her."

"You'll have to," Pam replied tartly. "Massawa is now seven minutes overdue. You need to pull your shit together enough to shine him on." She gave me a haughty smirk. "Unless you want to excuse yourself owing to your sudden case of the vapors."

"I can't have a fucking meeting with the Magister when I can barely sit up. Burn this place down, if you have to. I can't let him see me like this. It'll raise questions. I want _zero_ attention drawn to me and Sookie at this point. Not until I know what happened to her."

Another alien wave of nausea hit me. I beat it down. I couldn't afford to lose what might be my last meal for a long time.

"But Eric," Jessica's voice trembled. "You look like shit. Like you have one of those hemorrhagic fevers on the Discovery Channel. You'll _never_ be able to see _anybody_ lookin' the way you do."

She was right. All the more reason to give into my screaming instincts and find Sookie. Her presence would instantly heal any fever I might have.

The door above us shot open and two swizzle stick legs in impractical heels came staggering down the steps.

"Pam!" Ginger cried out, looking wildly at our group. "The Magister's here! I tried to stall like you said, but he doesn't want a drink or anything! What do you want me to do with him?!"

"Oh, shit," Jessica whimpered.

"Keep your fucking voice down," Pam hissed at Ginger, looking at the ceiling, knowing he was above us somewhere. "You stupid bitch, did he see you come down here?"

"Well, yeah, of course. This is where you are," Ginger looked confused. Like showing Massawa where her masters were wasn't another indiscreet action that could have been avoided with a phone call. What the fuck was wrong with my staff? Perhaps I needed to hold a seminar on how to launder our delicates privately and not air them in the public domain. Stupid me for thinking that went without saying.

"Did you tell him Eric was here?" Jessica asked.

Ginger looked at her with guileless eyes. "Yeah, I said I'd see if he was available."

"Jesus fuck!" Pam reached out and struck her across the face. "So you told him Eric's here and suggested he had better things to do than keep his meeting? Ginger, I'm going to shove a straw through your chest and drain you like a fucking Capri Sun."

"Enough!" I roared. "There's no option. I have to see him."

Ludwig shook her head hard. "You can't even stand. Do you plan to hold court in this sublevel shit box?"

The phone in Ginger's daisy dukes beeped. She checked the message. "Shit! The bartender says Massawa's coming this way!" She was on the edge of screaming. Again.

"Shit," Jessica repeated, squatting low on instinct, readying to hide or fight.

"_Shit_," Ludwig muttered, moving away from me, but knowing there was nowhere for her to go.

_Shit shit shit!_

"Oh, fuck this noise," Pam muttered, striding to the silver cabinet on the side of the room. Ignoring the knives, wires and other torture implements, she grabbed an innocent glass bottle.

She didn't hesitate.

She ripped off the stopper, threw her head back and downed our entire stock of colloidal silver.

I didn't even have time to process what she'd done before the echo of her pain lanced into my already broken body and threw me to the floor again. My groans were completely drowned out as Pam screeched in pure agony. Throwing herself away from the cabinet, she collapsed on the floor, writhing as the silver ate into her body like acid.

I had no time. Massawa would be here in seconds.

I levered myself up, nearly retching again. I grabbed the doctor by the arm and threw her towards Pam. "Examine her," I hissed through gritted teeth.

_Pam truly was a genius._

Thankfully, the doctor also wasn't an idiot. She immediately put her hands on Pam. "Hold still," she ordered in a firm, loud voice. "Northman, get your Child under control."

Footsteps were coming down the stairs.

"Pam," I said just as loudly. "What have I said about screening your donors more carefully? Jessica, quit being a fucking tourist and help the doctor."

Jessica wasn't as clever as Ludwig, but she followed orders. She zipped to Pam's side as she thrashed from side to side, holding her arms as Ludwig peered at the smoke pouring from my Child's mouth.

Though hunched away from the door, I felt the prickle of a very old vampire enter the room.

Pam screamed nonstop. The sound was deafening.

"She's had quite a lot," the doctor said stoically. "I assume her donor drank silver before letting Pam feed from her."

"_No fucking shit_!" Pam bellowed up at her.

I let her continue to scream for several more seconds. Even though it was my Child who'd paid the price, I wanted him to see the show. When I finally felt he'd had a decent eyeful, I turned towards the stairs. Ginger stood on buckled knees at the base, Massawa stood above her in another impeccable suit as he watched our little pageant, and Jason sat beneath them on his chair blinking with vacant curiosity.

"Magister," from my low position, I still bowed. "How are you this evening?"

He squinted at me. "Running behind," he said. "Though it appears that my night is less colorful than yours."

I gave a deliberate wince. "I'm afraid you've caught us at a bad time. My Child has been targeted by a poisoner."

"And the human woman? She is a medical professional of some sort?"

Ludwig looked at him with her default bitch expression. "You think I'm here for the fucking ambience?" She turned to me. "You. Quit looking so goddamn awful and help me. The redhead's too young. If your Child's pain hurts you that much, shut down your bond with her, but staple her ass to the ground so I can _look_."

I sighed, the bored Maker, and shuffled over to help hold Pam still as the tiny woman continued to poke and prod. I gave Massawa a look of pained apology. "Might I take a raincheck? I'm afraid I'm having trouble concentrating with Pam in such pain. Fuck knows I tell the staff to glamor their meals to ask about silver, but Pam gets overeager for a good set of tits."

From his side, his hand rose fractionally in dismissal. "Of course. We can postpone until tomorrow night." He sniffed the air, cocking his head in recognition. From his position, he could not see Jason, but it didn't stop him from pinpointing his presence.

"Who is the male in this room?"

"A..a donor," Jessica stuttered, looking at the floor as she addressed a vampire miles beyond her in status and age. "A clean one. I...I brought him for Pam, to keep her strength up."

"Last chance on the chicken, people. The gravy train is sailing." Jason's ultimatum was ignored.

Massawa stared at the baby vampire as she tried her very best to melt behind me as we continued to restrain Pam.

"I see."

Pam's shrieks had lessened into delirious moans. I shushed her in an unhurried, fatherly tone.

I looked up at the Nubian. "Until tomorrow night then. Please forgive the inconvenience."

He watched for several seconds longer. More than was necessary. "Not at all," he responded finally. "For the first time tonight, I'm ahead of schedule." He looked at me pointedly. "Give Miss Stackhouse my regards."

With that, he turned and retreated back up the stairs.

He'd barely closed the door before Ginger let out a string of shaky expletives. I barked at her to shut up.

Waiting another twenty seconds in complete silence, until I was sure he was gone, I finally let myself collapse onto my hands. The entire production had taken my last bit of strength.

I finally let myself look at Pam with the terror I'd hidden from Massawa. She had quieted now that the show was over, but her pain was breaking my already shattered heart. Her eyes were bleeding. Her ears, her nose, her mouth. She was leaking heavily from them all. With trembling fingers I reached out and caressed her cheek.

"I fucking love you," I whispered, looking at her helplessly. "What can I do?"

Through her tight mask of pain, she smiled. "Give me forty-five seconds alone in Tiffany's. Whatever I manage to put on, I keep."

"You'll have ninety seconds."

"I love you, too." With great pain, she lifted up slightly and brought her lips close to mine. "If I ever catch you with a stake against your heart again, I'll ram it through your dick hole."

My Child. She was a piece of work.

I kissed her palm, then rounded on Ludwig. "Heal her."

She snorted, sitting back and dropping her faked urgency. "She chose too well. Massawa would have noticed if we were all worried about something as easily fixed as a silver chain around her neck. But she _drank_ the shit. It'll take time to work its way out of her system. There's nothing we can do but keep her fed and comfortable." She looked down at Pam with something akin to respect. "Very well played."

Pam coughed a laugh. "Thanks. Now heal _him," _she jutted her thumb at me.

"Easy. Find Miss Stackhouse."

I closed my eyes, willing my blood in my lover to answer me. But just like in my office, my call echoed without a reply. I shook my head.

"I need the fairy."

"What the hell are y'all talkin' about?" Jessica whispered conspiratorially.

I ignored her question. "Get me to my house."

She nodded quickly.

I looked up at Jason and called him over again. When he knelt beside me, I asked him, "If a vampire had injured herself helping your sister, would you offer your blood willingly?"

Jason's smooth brow wrinkled in thought. "I dunno. I guess so. She good lookin'?"

I pointed to Pam. "If you weren't glamored, would you feed this woman of your own free will?"

Normally I would never ask, I would simply command it. Pam was careful with her meals and they were never the wiser afterwards, so I knew he was not in danger. But the last scrap of sanity I had left told me that Sookie would never allow Jason to be used against his will. He was an idiot, and he was convenient, but it didn't matter. I couldn't risk taking him out of his trance, but I would ask for his consent, at the very least.

After a moment, he gave a slow nod while he stuck his lower lip out. "Yeah, sure. If she helped Sookie, no prob." He gave Pam a practiced, if minor league smirk. "What's _your_ name, Blue Eyes?"

Their black coffee eyes were where his and Sookie's similarities ended.

I looked down at Pam again. "I have to go," I whispered, hoping she understood.

She exhaled stiffly. "Thanks for dinner."

"Be gentle with him. Then wipe the whole night and send him on his way. He fell asleep in front of the tv, okay?"

"Okay."

Jessica offered me her shoulder. Placing my hand on it, I staggered to my feet. Ginger's eyes were nearly popping out in fear. One of the reasons I'd passed her over in favor of Jason for Pam. Her coping mechanism under duress was for shit. That, and she weighed ninety pounds soaking wet.

My head hurt. I couldn't muster another glamor.

"Jessica..."

"Oh, sure," she saw my gesture at the woman's eyes. "Ginger," she stared her down. "Everything's fine. You didn't see any of this. Go on back upstairs, now. It's just another shift. Eric and Pam are out. You don't know where they are or when they're coming back. Kay?"

Ginger gave her zombie nod that I've seen a hundred times. "Sure," she murmured. "Just another shift."

I turned to Ludwig. "Stay with Pam. For your help tonight, I'll pay you enough to send your grandsons to Harvard."

"Cambridge."

"Both. I don't care. Just...thank you."

She lowered her head back to her task, taking Jason's wrist and placing it to Pam's mouth. I turned back to the stairs before I saw my Child bite. I didn't want to be here once the smell of Jason's blood hit the air. I might have to contend with it smelling a little like Sookie, and I couldn't handle that right now. Jessica and I took the stairs as fast as I could manage. I stopped quickly in my office to get my keys to the Jeep I kept out back for emergencies. I cursed that I'd flown tonight and left my Lotus, and after being so pleased that I could fly off to get to Sookie faster. That decision mocked me now.

I turned and tossed the keys to Jessica. "You're driving."

She raised her hand to catch them.

They never made it to her hand.

A bright flash erupted between us and another feminine hand plucked them from midair.

Claudine stood between us, my keys dangling from her fingers... one of which bore the ruby ring I'd given Sookie.

"Eric," she breathed. "There's very little time. I need to tell you about what's happened with Soo-,"

I did not let her finish.


	51. Chapter 51

**A/N: Eric's POV again. We can't just leave it like that. **

I was weak, but I was still a hell of a lot stronger than a fairy.

I lunged at Sookie's kidnapper and held her down on the floor, crushing her hands into her stomach so she couldn't shoot me. I felt Sookie's ruby biting into my palm. I clapped a hand over her mouth as she cried out, her eyes terrified over the stack of my fingers.

I looked up at Jessica, who'd thrown herself against the wall.

"Is this the woman you smelled at my house?"

Jessica's pale blue eyes had dilated. As the doctor said, the promise of blood and fucking turned our pupils as wide and black as 45 vinyls. I saw her nostrils quivering as she took in the Claudine's scent, which was closer to spun sugar than Sookie's honey. She was very pure, far more so than my "Half Child" wife, and Jessica was beginning to destabilize as her fragrance filled my office.

It did absolutely _nothing_ for me, however. I might as well have been wrestling a garlic braid.

I clenched down harder on the squirming imp and barked, "Jessica!"

She flinched, then bobbed her head rapidly. "Yeah... yeah that's her. My God. She's incredible. She's smells like..."

I ignored her, glaring into the eyes of the woman beneath me. "Stop struggling. Do not try to teleport. You won't escape before I kill you. If you don't answer every question I ask you, I'll rip your head off and let this girl drink it like a beer stein. Do you understand?"

Both Claudine and Jessica whimpered at the thought, one in longing, one in horror.

The fairy nodded frantically. Without lifting my hand on her mouth, I asked with a deadly calm voice, "Did you take my Sookie?"

Her expression collapsed in dismay. Her eyes rolled away from me and I could feel the telltale sign of prey opting for hysteria over the infinitely harder choice of keeping her head. I shook her hard.

"No, no," I admonished softly. "You don't get to check out. You tell me right now if you put your hands on my angel, if you touched one hair on her head. If you hurt her, or took her against her will. I felt her fear before she was ripped out of my soul. Wherever she is, she went unwillingly. So how 'bout it, buttercup? Are you responsible for our pain?"

She groaned behind my hand, but brought her eyes back to mine. I saw resolution there.

She nodded.

"Then you're dead." My hand was already starting to push down into her mouth. A few more pounds of pressure and her jaw would buckle into her skull.

Claudine sobbed in pain.

Jessica squeaked. "Eric... don't..."

I looked up at her. "What?"

She looked positively torn between the treat I'd offered her and mercy. She was gobbling Claudine up with her eyes, so she looked away, squeezing them shut. "Please let her talk. You can't just kill her unless you've got a good reason. What if Sookie was in trouble? What if Claudine was trying to help?" She paused, biting her lips in concetration. Bloodlust made her hands tremble. "What if she's the only one who can lead you to Sookie?"

"She's admitted her guilt."

"She nodded once and you asked, like, five different things. Let her explain."

My Radia throbbed in rage and sorrow. It was still punishing me, and I wanted this woman to pay for it. I didn't want to be a judicious king right now, nor did I want to concede that this infant vampire was momentarily wiser than myself. Unwillingly, I stopped my slow crush of her bones.

"Is that what _Jesus_ would do, Jessica?" Fucking modern day do-gooders.

From her subdued position, she eyed me knowingly. "It's what _Sookie_ would do."

With that simple, devastating truth, my hold on the fairy broke all together. Claudine jerked her head away from my hand and swallowed a huge, ragged gulp of air. Restraining her had taxed me greatly. I rolled to my hands and knees beside her, dropping my head, willing my head and stomach to stop boiling. The fairy rolled, too. From her side, she coughed and sputtered. For two exceptionally old and powerful creatures, we must have made a sorry sight.

"You stupid bastard," she gasped at me in her clipped, British accent.

"Thieving bitch."

"Um, should I leave you guys alone?" Jessica made to move to my side, but hesitated at the smell of fairy on my clothes. Later, when I wasn't whipped up and pissed off, I would be very proud of her. Ninety-nine vampires out of one hundred would have begged me for this woman's blood, in any quantity and condition. They would have licked it off the seat of a shit-spattered outhouse. They would have insisted she was guilty without hearing one word about the crime, just eager for the sentence. Or they simply would have taken advantage of my weakened state and killed her themselves, dragging her away so they could gnaw on her in private.

Bill had accidentally turned a goddamn saint.

"No," I answered. "Stay. Help me up."

Skirting as far from Claudine as she could get, she eased into my space and offered her shoulder again. As we stood up unsteadily, I said, "You'll be rewarded for this, Miss Hamby."

She gave me a nervous smile. "All I want is your shirt." She shocked me by swooping in and pressing her face into my chest, nearly inhaling my tee shirt right off me. "You smell like the happiest place on earth."

"It's yours."

She led me to the chair in front of my desk. I'd been here less than an hour ago talking to Pam, just before this woman had done whatever it is that she'd done with Sookie. My bloody retchings had already been cleaned up. Another check in Ginger's favor. She'd scrubbed more than her share of viscera off Fangtasia's tiles.

I fell into the seat, my eyes never leaving the Fae. As she finally caught her breath, she rose to sit on her heels, her white dress cascading around her. Her fingers traced gently around her mouth, checking for injury. Jessica took my chair behind my desk, putting as many feet and pieces of furniture between her and temptation as possible.

"This girl saved your life. Talk."

"Sookie is safe."

I snorted. "My Child is injured downstairs. I'll turn you into a fucking IV for her unless you tell me exactly what's going on."

Her expression became hooded. "Perhaps the girl should leave. There is much to say."

"The girl is your lifeline. If you continue to piss me off, you'll need her protection from me."

Claudine considered this, then closed her eyes and dropped her head. "Very well. I'll start at the beginning..."

And she did. Two vampires sat in stone silence as the Custos of Magic revealed herself and the job she'd been entrusted with all those centuries ago. She described her brethren as well, the Custos of all description who had been scribbling their observations since time began. She glossed over most of them, knowing my patience was a drying well. When she finally came to the Custos of War, a shiver broke over her skin.

I leaned forward. "Who?"

Her head went high. "Okalo Massawa."

"Bullshit."

"There's no time for bullshit."

"Apparently there's time for the most irrelevant history lesson I've ever sat through. Where the fuck is Sookie? What does Massawa the Custos of Guns & Ammo have to do with you taking her from me?"

"Everything. And I didn't take her from you. I removed the Scion from harm's way. If Sookie dies before his birth, then all hope will die with her. Massawa, arguably the most powerful vampire in the world, has made his intentions clear; kill the Scion and prevent the end of the world."

I went rigid in my chair, my lips pulling away from my teeth as I hissed at her. She responded with a pitying glance. "I'm sorry for your pain, but when Sookie told me his name, I had no choice. I took her somewhere Massawa can never find. The Scion will be born in safety, and once that happens, I will bring your woman and your child back to you."

"You will take me to Sookie. Now."

"Impossible."

The arm rests cracked under my clenched hands. "How clumsy of me. That wasn't meant to sound like a request."

"The plane she's in cannot support vampire life. Or human. Or were. She and I are the only people who know of it, and it'll stay that way. For her protection."

I rose fractionally from my chair, ready to kill her again. "You left my pregnant angel on some shitty, no-life plane? _Alone_?"

"She isn't bound and gagged in some basement, vampire. She is healthy and well provided for." Claudine flattened her hand and removed Sookie's ring from her finger. Weary of my rage and Jessica's hunger, she stayed seated and simply flipped it to me like a coin.

I caught it, holding it under my nose. Sookie' scent was still on it. Thankfully, it wasn't saturated in fear. I resisted the urge to stick it in my mouth and savor the taste of her skin, and instead removed my leather necklace. Untying the thong, I slipped the ring onto it, alongside the eagle talon I'd worn since my fifteenth summer. I retied the knot and looped it over my head.

Claudine watched me, her anger cooling fractionally. "She's furious at me, but she's well. She begged me to come here and tell you that. And that she loves you." She gestured to my necklace. "She says she wants that back when she sees you again."

"You know what I hate, you fucking Fae? I hate stories that sound logical and even pull a few heartstrings, but conveniently can't be verified by anyone but the author. You, the pixie savior, kidnapped my bonded to protect her from a big, bad man. You have nothing but our interests at heart. Right? How do I know _you're_ not the Custos of War, hmm? How do I know you haven't been biding your time until Sookie was unprotected, then you swooped in and imprisoned her in some glitter-stained dungeon? How do I know you won't kill my son? Or rip him out of Sookie's arms to raise as your own? What if you're psychotic? What if you're jealous? What if you're certain the Coming needs to be stopped?"

She gasped at the insinuations. "I would _never_! I told you before! The Coming fills me with nothing but hope! The Scion is the ultimate magic and I am the _Custos_ of Magic! You think I can outwit Fate?! That even if I wanted the glory for myself, that the Scion would allow it? I'm not running a kidnapping ring, you asshole! Nor am I robbing a maternity ward! This is so much bigger! _Why can you not see it_?!"

Her vitriol pleased me. Perhaps she was telling the truth. "I'm still left with nothing but a ring you could have pried off her severed finger and a promise that everything is a-Okay. It's not enough. Show her to me. Prove that she's as you say. Then I may consider your suspicions of Massawa and your request to move my wife and son from his path until Adam is born."

Claudine drew herself up higher. "No."

"There I go again, being clumsy."

"I didn't come here to negotiate. I came here to inform. You're wise to suspect me, but I can't afford to risk the Scion by bringing him back here, just to win your trust. I'll settle for yours and Sookie's wrath. I'd rather you despise me for two weeks then bring Sookie back to this plane and see all three of you killed."

The hot ball of Light in my chest had been listening to the whole conversation. Upon hearing this, it sent an enraged pulse that fried my entire ribcage. I doubled over in pain, clenching my teeth in fear of losing Sookie's blood. I groaned loudly over the muffled thump of my busy bar. I looked up from my crouch at the bitch responsible, bloody tears blurring my vision.

"Give me Sookie," I demanded. I wasn't here to negotiate either.

She shook her head. "Forgive me."

I was weak. And while I was a lot stronger than a fairy, I was not faster.

Without another word, Claudine popped away.

I gripped the side of my desk and roared. Roared in pain. Roared in anger. But most of all, I roared for Sookie. My Radia, denied its request, went back to cutting deli-thin slices off my heart and torching them with gleeful spite. I had no option but to endure it.

After a few moments, Jessica knelt at my side. She hesitantly laid her hand on my knee. "Eric?"

I was barely aware of her and didn't respond.

"Please. You gotta tell me what to do. Until Pam gets better, I'm all you've got. I know I'm not as smart as her, but I'm ready to do whatever needs doin'. But you've gotta snap outta this. The doc says there's nothing physically wrong with you, remember? I know it hurts, but you've gotta just stand up, put one foot in front of the other, and go find Sookie. I'm right here. What's first? Did you still want me to drive you to your house?"

I uttered an ugly, coughing laugh. Bill's progeny, Little Miss Home School, was going to be my third in command for the rest of my days. Not only was she a saint, not only was she a thinker, not only was she a soldier, she was quickly becoming a friend. A friend who would one day have what it took to be a general.

Louisiana ran thick with glorious women.

I refused her offered hands and stood up. Sookie's Light threatened to drop me. I silently shouted it down. Jessica was right. This was a magical pain. My arms and legs were still connected to my body. I wasn't on fire. I wasn't strapped in silver. I was technically fine. Sookie's Light could fucking take a pill. We were on the same side and I was going to find our mistress, so it could chill the fuck out in the meantime.

Jessica stood beside me. I startled her by cupping her face, much like I did Pam and Sookie. "I may adopt you one day. You're a magnificent Child."

She dipped her chin in embarrassment. "Is that even a thing? Adopting orphan vamps?"

"If you wish it, yes. Our world would recognize you as mine."

If she could have, she would have bloomed red. "So. Am I still takin' you to your place?"

I dropped my hands, and willing my body to stay upright, I stooped and picked up my keys where the fairy had dropped them. "No. We're going to visit more family."

**E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S**

We weren't going far.

Jessica took the time to ask a few questions about fairies and who the Custos were. Rather than ignore them, or lie to her, I decided that if she'd impressed me enough to offer my Maker rights to her, then she'd earned the right to some of my knowledge. If I was serious about keeping her close, then I would not make the same mistake I had with Pam. In this time of battle, they deserved information. I told her what I knew. Her eyes skipped to me nervously when she asked if I really could walk in the sunlight like Ludwig had said. I hesitated for only a second. Then confirmed it.

I risked much, telling a vampire I could not silence as a Maker.

Jessica, who had lost sunlight only recently, shrugged and smiled. "That's pretty cool."

Infants.

I watched the dark forest pass us as Jessica drove us east. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I began to organize my thoughts around Massawa. For the time being, Sookie was my main concern and not rumors about the Magister's extra curricular work. Nonetheless, it was a serious accusation and while I had doubts, the fairy clearly did not. The man terrified her.

I was never one to be caught with my ass in the wind, as Sookie once observed. Thus, I began to plot.

We pulled up to a modest home on two grassy acres just outside of Shreveport. It had only been acquired recently, but there was already fresh paint, a new deck, and a tree house in a climb-friendly maple tree.

Alcide. Another fucking modern day do-gooder.

"Who lives here?" Jessica asked as she handed me back my keys.

"Sookie's cousin," I grunted, opening my door.

She joined me on my side of the car, looking up at the lit windows. We could hear the sound of the television and smelled spaghetti cooking. A boy child asked when dinner was going to be ready. Hunter, I assumed. A deep man's voice surprised me, telling the boy to wash his hands and set the table.

Apparently Alcide was playing house as well as building them.

Jessica took in the same information, pulling air through her nose and perking her ears. "Do you want me to go ring the doorbell or something?" she whispered.

I shook my head, scanning the trees that surrounded us. "We're not here for them."

She looked at me quizzically. "We're not?"

"No."

"Then what are we here for?"

I closed my eyes, slowly filling my lungs, looking for a much fainter scent than a were or a pasta dish. I turned on my heel, screening all directions.

Jessica whispered another question. I reached out and put my finger on her lips without opening my eyes. I needed silence.

Because... wait...

...just wait...

_There._

I got it.

My body exploded in pain as I ran as fast as I could into the tree line.

I had to act quickly.

My nose led me to her exact hiding place.

A woman's scream tore through the night as I grabbed her and zipped back to Jessica's side. I might need her help and I could not afford to lose the only possible lead I had to Sookie.

Jessica's eyes nearly popped from her head as I reappeared with yet another fairy, this one every bit as beautiful and intoxicating as the one she'd seen in my office.

"Chloe," I spoke silkily to Hadley's fairy godmother. "Enchanted to meet you."

The sprite bucked wildly beneath me, just as Claudine had, her purple accented dress ripping at the seams. I repeated the same ultimatum that if she attempted to pop away, I would kill her.

"Jesus Almighty, Eric! What the _hell_ are ya doin'? Who_ is_ this lady? _Who the hell are all these ladies_?" Jessica's squealed over the fairy's muffled screams.

I heard raised voices coming from the house. They had heard Chloe's caterwauling.

"Grab her legs. If she cooperates, I promise not to hurt her."

Jessica obeyed in a fog of confusion. She grabbed the woman's delicate ankles. Chloe sobbed behind my hand. Jessica's fangs dropped and she moaned in desire.

"I am not your Maker, but I command you not to bite this fairy," I panted at her.

She locked her fangs behind her lips and nodded frantically. "Doin' my best, here."

Forty feet away, the front door burst open. I heard the cocking of a shotgun as Alcide ordered Hadley and Hunter to stay in the house.

I had very little control over the situation. I had to hurry.

Feeling deja vu all over again, I glared down into a fairy's face and yelled at her. "Where has Claudine taken Sookie? Is she in your realm? Is she injured? Talk, firefly, or I'll rip you to pieces."

Through her terror, bewilderment shined brightly in her eyes.

I shook her again. "Has Sookie gone back to Faery? Have I lost her to your world again?" The possibility broke me in half. If Sookie was truly in Faery, I may not see her for years. Mab might imprison her for days, which would equal a century of my time. Her little gift in my chest would never allow me to live that long without her.

"_WHERE IS SOOKIE_?"

A cold barrel levelled against my back. "Get the fuck off her, Eric."

In a flash, Chloe's features changed from terrified to smug.

"Go inside, wolf," I hissed at Alcide behind me. "This isn't your concern."

The barrel pushed harder. "You made it my business," he growled low. "And you ain't killin' anyone on Hadley's front lawn. Let her up. Slowly, now."

I hissed at her, ignoring him.

"The bullets are solid pine, man. Don't be an asshole."

Jessica met my eyes. I read her silent request to take him out. I shook my head. Sookie would kill me.

I cursed loudly and released my mute prisoner. With a triumphant, Fuck You smirk, she lit up like a lavender flare and disappeared from under me.

I heard gasping all around me as our small audience saw its first fairy escapologist.

I collapsed into the grass. My one and only link to Sookie's people had vanished. All was lost.

"You fucking idiot," I swore softly at the man above me. "She's gone. She's gone and now Sookie is truly lost to me."

Another two sets of feet came up hesitantly behind Alcide. "I said stay in the damn house, baby. It ain't safe out here."

"It's Eric," Hadley countered hotly. "I trust him every bit as much as I trust you."

"Then why the fuck is he wrestlin' magic women in your front yard? Eric, Jesus! You wanna tell me why you're suddenly trying to kill our tail? And what the hell is she doin' out here in the woods anyway?"

"Alcide! Language!"

"He can hear my thoughts, Had. No point in keeping it PG."

But I was barely listening. None of them mattered anymore. My only hope now is that Claudine was true to her word and returned Sookie to me after Adam was born. It was a horrific thought, but it was better than all of the alternatives.

I was so lost in my own misery that I didn't hear the smallest pair of feet shuffle over to me and squat by my side. I saw Scooby-Do slippers and a set of Spiderman pajamas in my peripheral. A little hand came up and touched my cheek. "Why are you so quiet?"

"I have nothing to say."

"No, your brain. Your brain isn't thinking."

I spared a glance at the serious child sitting next to me. I was grieved to discover another Stackhouse with blonde hair and dark eyes. "I'm vampire. Vampires are silent to telepaths like you."

The little boy seemed pleased, his large brown eyes staring into mine, finding no thoughts at all. "Are you aunt Sookie's vampire? The one momma thinks about?"

"Yes," I answered. "I belong to your aunt."

"Why are you here?"

"She's gone away. The lady who follows you around might have known where she was."

Alcide and Hadley continued to argue in hushed tones above us while Jessica stood awkwardly to one side.

The boy patted my hair like I was a forlorn puppy. "You shouldn't be sad, you know."

"But I am. I've lost Sookie."

"Naw. She's not _lost_."

I pulled back, looking at him carefully. "What do you mean? Did Chloe tell you something?"

He shook his head, smiling gently. "She turned her mind off around us."

"Then where is Sookie?" I felt ridiculous asking a six year old.

He leaned toward me, whispering.

"She's in the place behind the air."


	52. Chapter 52

**A/N: I'm very surprised by a lot of reviewers' fear at our couple's separation right now. Some even ask if this is going to be one of those epic stories where they're separated for 50 chapters. I'm going on the record now to assure you that I don't have 50 chapters of misery in me. I swear! Sookie's POV**

My hand shook as I gripped the dinner knife from my last meal and carved a jagged line alongside its six sisters on the back of the wardrobe, which was standing upright once more, with all of my "new" clothes stored properly inside. Pasty white and baggy, they made me long for the bright, pretty clothes I'd bought hours before I was dragged here.

Once the line was deep enough, I threw the knife back onto the empty plate on the small table beside me. Claudine would disappear it when she came back and conjure a new one for breakfast. She wouldn't even notice the splinters caught in the serrated blade before it vanished. She never did.

I reached up and traced the newest addition in the dark wood, feeling utterly miserable at its significance.

It marked the seventh day.

Seven days I'd been in this place. Seven days I'd been forced to sit in this breathable vacuum, listening to a deafening silence that I occasionally broke with my own scream. Sometimes it was Eric's name. Mostly it was just an ugly, angry shriek. Sometimes I sang to Adam, trying to keep myself from falling into total despair. He deserved better than a clinically depressed mommy, so I hummed little lullabies that Gran used to sing. _You Are My Sunshine_, _The Teddybear's Picnic_, _Three Blind Mice_, _Twinkle Twinkle Little Star_, even though there weren't any stars to sing about. Seven days with no night. No breeze. No birds. No life. Only Claudine's visits broke the monotony, and those were always brief since she feared Mab would suspect something if she dillydallied in a place where the fairies couldn't track her.

Nothing ever changed. I was only able to mark the days by my watch.

I was big now. _Really_ big. Crazy, scary big. If Ludwig's predictions and my belly were anything to go by, I was in my eighth month. Adam moved freely now, kicking and summersaulting the days away. I tried to remind myself that his situation and mine were identical, and he hadn't complained. He was alone in a place where the scenery never changed, too. He seemed content to swim his laps and sleep. I envied him. He had a much higher tolerance for solitary confinement than I did.

Claudine came to me two or three times a day to make sure I was okay and make my meals. I was never civil to her, and considered going on a hunger strike. If it hadn't been for Adam, no doubt I would have. But she was a bastion of patience, always cleaning up the mess I'd made of the furniture and other provisions without comment, then blinking me more food and water. She even erased the smoking holes I'd blasted into the grey grass, trying to Smite my way out of this shit hole. It hadn't ripped this plane open like I'd hoped. It had merely made a small, black crater, no different than when Jason had thrown cherry bombs on Gran's lawn. I gave up on it as a means of escape. I should have known it wouldn't be that easy. I tried to keep my rage in the forefront of my brain when she was around. I didn't want her to hear that the childish messes I made everyday were a ruse.

She'd be suspicious of what I did all day if I wasn't stewing and knocking over the bed and cushioned chair she'd made me.

In truth, I was reading.

Whenever I wasn't sleeping, I was knee-deep in her collection, skimming one giant leather-bound volume after the other. At first I just sat on the grass next to the mammoth, never-ending case, several books littered around me as I searched for the text that told me how to escape this place. But after a day or two, my belly grew too big for such an uncomfortable position. It started killing my back. I had to start bringing books to the center of the grass where my cozy chair was, hiding most of them under my mattress and the one I was reading under my ass when Claudine's Light rippled and popped her out. When that happened, I shoved it behind me, bitched out big time until she left, then went right back to it. When I finished with that batch, I waddled back to the case, carefully put them back where I'd found them, then grabbed several more.

I deserved a damn medal.

Not for reading the actual words. Thanks to my new knack with languages, I could now read every single book as easily as if I were reading _Magic for Dummies_. No, I deserved a medal because I checked every single page, searching for a clue about how to get back to my Eric. I must have seen hundreds of thousands of them by now. And while I'm sure they were chock full of amazing entries about jaw-dropping displays of magic in history, I must admit that I didn't absorb a single word of it.

I checked a book. I dumped it. I checked another one. I dumped it.

Every scholar on earth would kill me for wasting such an opportunity.

_Screw those bookworms_, I thought bitterly as I turned away from the wardrobe and shuffled back to my big chair. I sat down stiffly, stretching my neck and arms, trying to lessen the ache from leaning over for hours and hauling tomes to and fro. Eric would be so irritated at me for not taking better care of myself.

_Eric._

I winced and shut my eyes against his name. I'd been trying very hard not to think about him. Every book I checked brought me closer to finding a way back to him. Every tear did not. I'd sworn to myself and to Adam that I wouldn't waste time crying for his father. Lord knows I wanted to. No minute away from him had been any easier than the first. The severed rope of our bond lay dead in my skull. My absent Radia continued to yank at me, even across our two planes. Eric's blood in me howled nonstop for its master, a lone wolf baying at the moon. Nothing I did consoled it.

My only comfort was that I had yet to die, which meant wherever Eric was, in whatever condition, he was alive.

I didn't want to think about his _condition_. He wasn't feeding. That was all I needed to know. The separation anxiety I felt for him was miserable, but at least I got to eat. I couldn't imagine him enduring the pain _and_ starvation. I shoved the thought away. It didn't help me focus.

When I'd asked Claudine about her visit with him, she'd been less than forthcoming. She'd simply said that she'd seen him and made him aware of the situation. The hardness in her eyes told me the conversation didn't go so hot. But she had all her arms and legs, which meant it went as well as could be expected.

Pushing myself further back against the rest, I made myself comfortable and grabbed my latest read out from under the cushions. I flipped it open to my spot, taking bitchy delight that I'd dogeared her precious fucking text. Without correcting the crease, I began to read again.

I finished it in an hour and had just settled down with the next book from under the mattress when the air began to warp and swirl. It must be breakfast time. I jammed the book underneath me and crossed my arms over my chest, looking ready to spit nails when Claudine popped five feet away, right next to my always-messy bed.

"Sookie," she greeted me like she always did. "How are you feeling?"

"Take me home. Now." Like I always answered.

"Soon," she seemed happier than usual, gazing at my tummy with her usual joy. "Your human genes have slowed your pregnancy, but you're coming along beautifully. I can't be more than a few more days now."

"And what happens then? Are you going to blink a hospital for me? Maybe some mannequin doctors and nurses so it doesn't feel so empty?"

"Don't be ridiculous. Fairies don't whelp in hospitals. You and I will manage just fine on our own."

I scrunched my face. "That a fact? Even though I'm half fairy and even though Adam is a quarter? I'm giving birth to the first fairy-human-vampire hybrid ever, but you're sure that all we need is some boiled water and ripped-up sheets?"

"In the highly unlikely event that anything goes wrong, I'll take us to Mab for help," she answered calmly.

I hissed with anger and threw myself back into my chair. "Mab is the_ last_ person I want to see."

"Would you rather risk dying here, should something unforeseen happen?"

"Clean out your fuckin' ears and listen when I say that I'd. Rather. Go. Home! Not here. Not Mab. _HOME_!" I shouted.

I wasn't planning on engaging her, not when the very sound of her voice made me want to kill her. But I couldn't seem to stop myself. She already knew my wishes and vetoed them every time. I had made every argument. For seven days I'd been calm, and crazy, and rational, and emotional, and wellspoken, and abusive. Nothing swayed her. She would not be convinced and she would not be cowed. So I settled for Sookie the Poisonous Snake mode, hissing and spitting venom whenever she came near me. She took it all in stride.

As she did now. Ignoring my shout, she began her usual routine of cleaning up after me. The furniture was righted, the clothes and toiletries put away. The bed went from wadded up to made with military precision in an instant. A quarter wouldn't only bounce, it would probably kill somebody. The dirty dishes vanished and were replaced with what I assumed were bacon, eggs, toast and fresh water. None of it tasted like anything, so appearance was the only clue I had.

I was starving, but I didn't move. I never ate in front of her. She'd never have that satisfaction.

Once she was done, she turned back to me. "I'll try to start coming more often, now that you're so close to your delivery time." She beamed wide. "I know you hate me, cousin, but are you not the slightest bit excited? Your child is coming! And soon everything will be right again. Better even."

I looked away from her. "It would have been. But you've ruined it for me. And Eric. Being here has been the saddest experience of my life. Being taunted at school, being molested, being a lonely outcast in my town, losing Gran, none of them compare to this. And I have you to thank."

I felt a vague wave of remorse from her.

"Please take it as proof of the precautions needed to protect the Scion, then. I am not your tormentor, Sookie. I take no pleasure in this. Once Adam is born and you're with your man again, this pain will fade."

"Get the fuck out of here. I hate the sight of you." My usual goodbye.

She sighed heavily. "Be well, cousin. I'll be back soon." Her usual answer.

The moment she was gone, I fell on my breakfast. I noticed my portions were getting more generous, now that I was feeding two. Adam must have been an eater, because I couldn't shovel it down fast enough. It had all of the flavor of chewy air, but it was better than ten of Gran's pies. I scraped the plate with my finger, sucking the grease off before I turned and flung the plate as hard as I could against the wardrobe. It shattered. The sound of it breaking into tiny pieces made me warm. I picked up the glass of water, drained it, and let it join the plate across my open-air bedroom. The glass made an even better sound than the ceramic when it met its end.

That conversation, an exact copy of all our others, was the last damn straw.

With my ire tipping into white-hot rage, I turned on the room. I pulled the books out from under the mattress. I was done, done, done with this shit! It had been seven days and I was never going to find the answer in the few short days I had left. I'd made it through less than one percent of the tomes, and while I'd always known it was a long shot, my bad luck pissed me off.

I stared at the books on the bed. I hadn't read them yet. I'd hidden them until I finished the one under my seat. Too fuckin' bad.

I grabbed the first one on the stack, gripped it by each cover, and ripped.

The leather was old and the paper dry. It didn't take much before the spine buckled and the book came apart in my hands. The pages lost their support and fluttered around my feet.

I grabbed the next text and did the same.

And to another.

And another.

Soon all eight books were laying in tatters on the ground. I laughed maliciously. Claudine couldn't boast a pristine library anymore, now could she?

Just call me the fucking Sacker of Rome.

I looked out into the vast collection surrounding me. My hands grew hot with power. I felt my human senses dim as I surveyed this fairy stockpile with a fairy's wrath.

I had _tried_ to play fair and look for the text I needed the old fashioned way. Now? I was just mad.

"Hey!" I screamed at the library. "Now you listen here, dammit! I am _done_! Do you hear me? I'm done looking at you! I'm sicka bein' here and I'm sicka your bitch author and I want to leave!"

My hands exploded with Light. Tiny little comets whipped around me and teased the hem of my boring white sack of a dress. It lifted the ends of my hair. I'd never seen my Light boil out like it did now. I barely noticed. I wasn't finished.

I held my hands out like I was pulling a gun on the books. "Here's the deal! One of you has the information I need and that book is going to make itself known RIGHT NOW! Get the fuck out here and let me look at you, or so help me Christ I will turn you all into the biggest pile of confetti the world's ever seen! MOVE IT!"

My Light shot from my hands like a canon. The orbs were huge, bigger than I'd ever seen. Their blinding orange bodies sang across the colorless grass, arcing in a straight line before veering slightly to the left. At first, I thought I'd just carried out my threat prematurely. That my Light was doing my bidding and was heading for the first case it saw before it detonated.

I wouldn't have cared if it had.

But it didn't.

Once it changed direction, it sped up, aimed chest-high at a shelf about three hundred yards away, and exploded into a single tome. The impact was so violent that I assumed the book was going to burst into cinders.

But it didn't.

Instead, the book glowed the same brilliant orange, then simply pulled itself from the shelf, hovered for a moment, then set down on the grass. Obliging as can be.

"Well, who woulda thought..." I muttered, squinting and open-mouthed as it faded back to grey. My hands died down. No other books moved. I could barely see it from my position on the other side of the field.

For a heavily-pregnant woman, I ran surprisingly fast.

With my hands under my belly for support, I was huffing and puffing by the time I reached the hole in the endless stream of books with its occupant lying on the grass. It was closed. And it was grey. But its lack of color and blank cover didn't stop me from recognizing it right away.

I dropped to my knees, trembling as I reached out and flipped it open, just to be sure.

"You've gotta be kidding me."

It was the tome. The _original_ tome. The one that Bill had shown me. The one I'd stolen from Sophie Anne's palace. The one I'd read several times over. The one Eric had read as well. The one Claudine had taken back, insisting it was never supposed to have bled into our world in the first place.

As my eyes scanned over the first few sentences with ease now, I could feel my rage rising up again.

I'd already seen this book. It made no mention of The Seam or how to move between worlds. My hands Lit up in warning again. Even I didn't want to mess with them.

The growl I let loose would have put Eric to shame. "I've already looked at you," I accused. "You don't have what I need. Why the fuck did you step forward if you're not the right book?"

My Light grew bigger, backing up my threat. I waited for the book to magically pop open to a page that I'd missed before, or turn to a bibliography that mentioned the book I needed.

It did nothing. It sat in front of me, cool as a cucumber.

"All right," I sighed at it. "You asked for it."

I let another angry orb build in my palm, ready to unchain it. The book took my warning stoically. It didn't even ask for a blindfold and a cigarette.

It didn't even occur to me to spare it. I didn't care that in its pages was the prophesy of the Scion. It had angered me. In front of all its little book buddies. I wasn't feeling forgiving.

I shot my Light right at it. Boom, fucker.

But to my surprise, my Light didn't do my bidding and blast that stupid book to Hell. Even though I'd launched it with considerable force, it detached from my hand, and just hung gently in the air.

I'd never seen one of my orbs so close for so long. They always flew away so quickly, killing trees or heart-fucking Eric. I leaned it to admire how the warm colors swirled tightly within the ball.

"What are you doing, orby?"

It flashed at me, chastizing me almost. Then it floated up slowly over my head, until it was level with the gap the tome had left in the other books. It slid into the gap, flattening to fit, and disappeared.

I jumped to my feet and peered into the gap.

My Light was gone.

But the gap wasn't dark.

A gust of breath left me, purely disbelieving.

Hesitantly, I reached into it, my fingers sliding all the way to the back of the case, where they brushed against slivers of light coming through from the other side. I'd never - _never_ - seen any such light bleeding through the case with any of the books I'd taken out. With savage hands I clawed at the surrounding books, throwing them to the ground, digging out the source of that light.

What I saw had me laughing like a maniac.

Claudine. That wonderful, unthinking, shitty excuse for a carpenter. She'd said she didn't know how her book had fallen into our world and into the hands of a vampire queen, but that the problem had been rectified and would never happen again.

I gazed at the back of the case, now clear of books. There was a hole. A tear in the plane, I guessed. About eighteen inches in diameter. Several slender pieces of wood had been boarded over it, but they were ill-fitted and didn't completely cover the tear. I guess it was something she couldn't simply blink to fix. Light escaped freely through the cracks. The boards were only meant to keep the books from falling back into the other world.

_My world._

And while those boards were doing a bang-up job keeping books from escaping, they now had me to contend with.

I grabbed the top board and yanked. It snapped like a wooden ruler.

So did the second. And the third. And the fourth.

When I'd ripped all six boards away from the tear, I gripped the shelf below it and shoved my face through the hole.

Birds were chirping. The sun was shining like it was going out of style. I could smell trees and water and the wonderful, humid air of Louisiana that I'd know anywhere. I couldn't stop laughing. I laughed until tears ran down my cheeks. I wrapped my arms around my enormous belly and hugged Adam for all he was worth.

"We can cry now, baby," I told him as I backhanded my face. "We can cry till the cows come home."

I shoved my arm through the hole. I wouldn't fit, being as big as I was, but I didn't care. I immediately felt the difference on the skin exposed in my world. The moisture, the light, the vibration of a world filled with life.

Eric's blood roared into my hand, finally finding a direction to answer his call. I could feel his pull, so strong that it nearly ripped me right out of my rabbit hole. His blood was beside itself and nearly wept through the tips of my fingers, beyond happy to feel his presence once again.

I splayed my fingers wide, willing him to feel it.

I knew he could. I only had to wait. Wherever he was, whatever he was doing, he would come for me.

And I could _not_ stop laughing.


	53. Chapter 53

**A/N: Hey everyone! I seem to have lost quite a few readers! I'm hopeful this chapter makes up for the pain of the others. Send love! Holla back! Eric's POV**

Eventually, they convinced me to get up and go inside the house.

Hadley murmured an invitation into the house I'd given her, so Jessica, holding me up, was able to get us across the threshold without a pause. She set me down as carefully as she could manage onto an old Lazyboy. Its upholstery was so threadbare, I could make out the stuffing under the weave. Jessica took a seat across from me on the mismatched couch, peering into my face as she bit her lips in worry.

Alcide and Hadley continued their conversation in the kitchen, whatever it was. I wasn't listening.

I saw Jessica looking in their direction, her eyes hard. I growled at her and shook my head. We'd already had our little discussion about what would happen if she took her sadness at losing Bill to Hadley. She lowered her gaze and nodded.

Hunter, however, was far more interested in his guests than his mother and wolf guard.

Standing to the side of us, he alternated leaning in both our directions, looking much like a bouy at sea.

He looked at Jessica. "Your brain's also quiet," he surmised with a grin.

She gave him a kind look. "I'm a vampire like Eric, sweetie," she explained.

"You're pretty like him, too."

She chuckled with embarrassment. "Thank you, mister."

"Can I sit on your lap? Momma's brain gets really loud when she's mad."

She looked startled by the request, glancing towards the kitchen, but sat back and opened her arms. "Sure. I guess."

He immediately climbed onto her legs, clasping her bare arms and bringing them around his middle. His hands stayed curled around her wrists and he sighed blissfully as their connected skin drowned out the minds of the adults in the other room. "I like you. You're nice."

From the corner of my eye, I saw Jessica lean in and take a surreptitious sniff of his hair, her pupils dilating for the third time that night at the scent of fairy. I cocked my head and snorted a sample for myself.

Despite my misery, I cracked a smile at the girl. The child smelled delightful. Like Sookie, Hunter had an earthy sweetness to him, but unlike honey, his was a darker, clove-like scent. Such a tempting little meal sitting right in her lap, his blood would be calling to her with a siren's allure. I couldn't help but think that once Hunter became a grown man, he would drive female vampires crazy with that heady, masculine spice running through his veins. Like mulled wine, he'd go straight to their heads. That, and I had yet to see a Stackhouse that wasn't a looker.

His genetic make-up might drive him into the arms of one of them. Just look at his aunt, and to a lesser extent, his mother.

At that moment, a familiar tabby jumped onto the banged-up coffee table, meowing at us expectantly. It stabbed my heart all over again.

"It's your kitty," Hunter pointed excitedly. "Mom says we get to have him for awhile. Just until aunt Sookie gets settled."

Jessica saw my blanched face, and hurriedly asked the boy, "He's very pretty. What's his name?"

"I don't know. The _other_ quiet lady who dropped him off didn't talk much. I think she was sad. She told us we could eat him, for all she cared. I call him Cheeseburger. Momma said it was okay because he doesn't come to anything anyway."

I hated the animal for being yet another reminder of my Sookie, so I approved of the name change from my own. Her Kitty Eric, with his ridiculous, lopsided canines falling on either side of his chin, would henceforth be known as Cheeseburger.

I ignored the cat, giving all of my attention to the boy wrapped so contentedly in a vampire's embrace. "Tell me about this place, Hunter. This place behind the air. Is it someplace you can see? Someplace you can get to?"

The tiny telepath tilted his head, frowning with thought. "No. I can't go there. At least, I don't think so. But I can see it sometimes."

"Where do you see it?"

He gestured in front of himself. "Right in front of me. At school or in the woods. It doesn't matter where I am. It just shows up."

"What does it look like?"

At that, Hunter pulled a face. "It's hard to see real well. There's a thin, white shower curtain in my dad's bathroom? It's not clear, but you can see when someone's behind it. This place is kinda like that." He shook his head. "It doesn't matter. It's boring. No one's hardly ever there."

"But Sookie's there." I wasn't asking.

He nodded enthusiastically. "I heard her singing once. I tried to talk to her. Then I tried to think to her. She didn't hear me." He paused and rolled his eyes. "She sings awful. She was trying to sing all these songs we learned in school, but she got a lot of words wrong."

I grit my teeth. She'd been singing children songs. To our boy. And she was rusty.

"Can you see this place if you think about it? Or if you try really hard?"

He shook his head again.

"If I come see you in the evening time, do you think you can try for me? It's very important we get Sookie out of that place. She's going to have a baby and she needs to see her doctor." I didn't mention my own agony. The boy heard enough problems that weren't his own.

He looked at me skeptically. "Will she be mad about me naming Cheeseburger?"

"I promise you she won't mind at all. She might even let you keep him, if your mom agrees."

His eyes lit up at the prospect.

I wordlessly indicated to Jessica that we needed to leave. It was late and the family was getting anxious about us. As badly as I wanted to stay and make the boy show me this place, Jessica needed to go to ground in a few hours and I had several plates that needed spinning. I needed to check on Pam, get some rest, and figure out what the hell to do about Massawa. I was no good to Sookie if I was too weak to help her, or if I found her and brought her back and Massawa was every bit the threat Claudine said he was.

I stood unsteadily. Hunter turned in Jessica's lap and hugged her neck, burying his face in her hair. "Wasyer name?"

Jessica stiffened again, then slowly hugged him back. Just to torture herself, she put her nose in the crook of his neck and breathed deep. "I'm Jessica."

"Will you be my girlfriend, Jessica? I like sitting with you."

I fucking knew it.

With an iron will, she gently pulled away from him and set him on his feet. "I'm a bit old for you, sweetie. But you can bet that I'll be your friend."

Very commendable. But she wouldn't be too old for him for long. In fifteen years or so, the boy would be much harder to say no to. He'd bat his enormous dark eyes and smile his irritatingly charming smile, and suddenly she'd find herself out of excuses. Like the rest of us. I half hoped that Jessica never had the questionable honor of tasting him as a man. Drinking a Stackhouse fairy, then going back to normal humans was the culinary equivalent of wearing a hair shirt after experiencing the finest weave of silk. She'd be ruined.

Hunter accepted her friendship with a very serious handshake. "Momma! They wanna leave!"

Alcide and Hadley came into the room. Alcide crossed his arms and looked at me accusingly. "You gonna tell me what that was out there?"

No, I fucking was not. "The woman following you is a guardian of sorts. She's making sure Hadley meets with no harm. Once I'm gone, she'll probably return to her post." I stared him down. "Call me when that happens."

"Hell, no. If she's dangerous enough for you to attack her, then next time I see her around Hadley or Hunter, I'll kill her myself."

"You can't. Not only is she more powerful than you, but I may need her. I was simply trying to keep her from leaving. Call. Me."

"You plan to hogtie her again?"

"Until she plays ball."

"Or disappears into thin air? You're not telling me what I'm dealing with. How can I protect these two if you keep jerkin' me around?"

He was giving me a headache. He might have been right and I might have been paying him for this kind of diligence, but I hadn't had a migraine in a millennia and I didn't feel chatty. I pinched the bridge of my nose to expel it. "Jessica..." I twirled my fingers again.

"Sure," she took the hint just like before. She stepped forward and captured them both. "You don't need to worry. Chloe's not a problem. And you didn't see her disappear. Relax. Just call Eric if you see her again. That's all."

Hadley and Alcide nodded blankly.

"Yeah, sure."

"No problem."

"Oh," she added, "and Eric's gonna come by for a few nights to hang out with Hunter. It's totally fine. They're just gonna talk. Okidokie?"

They kept bobbing thier heads like puppets.

Hunter watched with his stupid, adorable Stackhouse eyes wide with wonder. "They're not thinking anymore," he whispered in awe. "How did you do that? _Can I learn how to do that_?"

Poor child. How attractive our gift must seem to a telepath. Jessica merely shook her head. "It's a vampire thing."

He looked at the floor. "Oh."

Carefully, I lowered to one knee, catching his eye. "I'll be back tomorrow night, once I'm through with a few chores. We'll practice then, okay?"

He shrugged noncommitally. "Kay. Bye Eric! Bye Jessica!"

We retreated and drove back to the bar. It was after closing time.

Pam had been moved onto the sofa in my office. Ginger and Jason were gone, but Ludwig was still sitting beside her, reading a magazine.

Jessica was perched under my arm. I looked down at her. "Where do you rest now?"

"I took the money you gave me and rented a house close to campus. It has a basement."

Good. Now that Compton's home was empty of descendants and vampires, I could tear it to the ground. "Go home. Feed. Rest. I'll need you again tomorrow night."

She stepped out from under me. "You got it." She leaned back and offered, "G'night, Pam."

"Fuck off, fire crotch."

Jessica took our combined advice and left.

I got to Pam's side and knelt. "How are you?"

Her bleeding had stopped. She looked at me with eyes rimmed in dried blood. "This couch reeks of screwing."

"You're welcome. Did feeding help the pain?"

She gave a wincing smile. "Yeah. You know those movies where a retard does one brilliant thing? I think Jason Stackhouse's blood can count cards."

"That good, huh? Just remember, I got the sister. Her blood can play concert piano."

"He's a decent silver medal."

I didn't think it wise to mention that Hunter might knock Jason off the podium entirely.

I stroked her hair. "We must rest. Massawa is coming back tomorrow and we can't afford to look this weak in front of him. Claudine came to me earlier. She has Sookie. She believes Massawa is a threat to our child."

"I knew that asshole dressed too well to be a good guy. Sweethearts don't wear William Fioravanti."

"If Claudine is right, then he's a good guy willing to do evil for the greater good. That is far worse. I need to ascertain what he wants, if anything, but I also need to get rid of him as quickly as possible. Sookie's cousin has a telepath child who may know how to find her. I must meet with Massawa, then get to the boy."

Her eyes slipped closed and air puffed from her raw throat. "I hurt. I don't want to move."

I turned to the doctor, who hadn't lowered her reading. "How is she?"

She still didn't lower it. "Healing. Slowly. She should be at seventy-five percent by tomorrow night."

I got to my feet and walked to my desk. One of my safes was hidden behind a false drawer. I twirled the combination and opened it. In it were meticulous stacks of bills, one hundred C notes in identical rubber bands. I took out ten stacks, closed the door and spun the lock. I gathered the stacks and walked back to the doctor. Without asking her, I opened her medical bag and dumped one hundred thousand dollars in cash inside.

She glanced down, then did a double take.

"Cambridge," I muttered. "The first instalment."

"My God." Her magazine shook slightly in her hands.

I went back to Pam. "I'll lock the door. You shouldn't be disturbed."

"Where will you rest?"

I looked away. "Home."

She said nothing. I left with the doctor, locking every door as I went. I drove with great effort to the house I shared with Sookie. I bore through scent of my wife and the little evidences of our happiness together. I clutched her ugly track suit to my nose as I died for the day. It was the last thing she'd worn and it smelled strongly of her. I rose the next night feeling no better, but looking less ill. Pam had improved considerably. Massawa commented on it when he arrived at seven. We conversed about our original topic of the upcoming Senate election. He gave me a list of people to lobby on the vampire community's behalf. He asked several times about Sookie. Now that Claudine had colored my view of the man, I found every inquiry suspicious, though they seemed innocent enough. After he left, I went to Hunter.

The woman and wolf took my visit in stride, thanks to Jessica. The boy ran to my redheaded chauffeur as she climbed out of the driver's seat and threw himself in her arms. Just like the night before, his expression turned dreamy and his body went lax as the silence of her mind enveloped him. I spent two hours on the lawn with him, watching him scrunch his face up as he tried to summon this shower curtain world of his. I suggested several meditation techniques. He tried them as well as his own methods. Nothing worked. Soon his weariness caught up with him and his mother called him in for bedtime. I could not bring myself to glamor Hadley for more time. Hunter was flagging badly. He was only a child, after all.

I came earlier the next night. In vain. The results were the same.

The night after that, Massawa visited me again. It was unexpected. My suspicion increased tenfold. He brought with him some paperwork that could have been couriered, then proceeded to sit in my office with me and discuss menial concerns that could have been emailed.

I answered every one of them and tried to act as helpful and trusting as an eagle scout.

"Sookie is still not with you. I imagined she would be more eager to help oversee your work, given how encouraging she's been in the past," he remarked coolly.

"She's still very encouraging," I replied soothingly. "While she's spends most nights with me, she spends some days awake to tend to human matters. I would not ask her to overtax herself by staying awake."

"I do hope she's not ill."

My expression didn't betray the growing ire I felt at his prodding. "No. She's healthy as ever."

We sat together in a few moments of silence. Massawa drew one long, exploratory breath after another through his nostrils. His eyes never left mine. My office smelled like booze. Pam, both healthy and silvered. Ginger. The doctor. Dust. Paper. Me, mostly. But threaded through them all, was Sookie. Watching the man pull the room apart with his nose, I became increasingly certain that he could detect Sookie's precious secret.

I silently cursed my own stupidity for ever bringing my fairy angel to this vampire dive, pregnant or otherwise. What kind of arrogance did I specialize in where I would tease them with her, and assume I could handle any reaction they might have to her allure?

And now here I sat with a man that I had not background checked, with far more power and age than myself, watching him as he idly confirmed that my fairy wife carried the magical child that he planned to murder in the womb.

I should have tied Sookie to my bed the very first night she came to me, and never let her go.

I asked if there was anything else he wished to discuss.

He let his silence continue for a moment, straightening his already straight cufflinks, before gracing me with a simple no.

I stood. As did he.

He wished me luck with Pam's continued recovery. And, he said before passing through the door, "I hope to see Miss Stackhouse soon."

By the time he'd gone, it was already well past two in the morning. The weekend was over and Hunter was back with his father, two towns away. I could not fly to him, glamor the man, force the child to work, then fly back. I was growing weaker every day without Sookie's blood to nourish me. Flying took energy. Driving, while less strenuous, would take even longer. Nor could I risk going to him in the day. Sookie had been right when she noted I had fans. And enemies. I could not tip my hand, especially if Massawa was watching us.

And now, I was convinced that he must be. Which meant he already knew Sookie hadn't left our house in days. Just like he knew that she'd seen Ludwig several times, once at an OBGYN center.

A Magister, even an ordinary one, would have fingers in many, many pies.

A Custos of War bent on stopping the Coming would own the whole pie shop.

His network would include day walkers of all description. Since he'd met Sookie, I doubt we'd made a single move that he was unaware of.

It had now been three days since she'd been taken from me. I used to employees' exit to avoid the stragglers in the bar and made some calls in the quiet parking lot. I could no longer assume my office was safe to speak in. I swept it regularly for spyware, but now I was paranoid. So from the relative safety of outside, I set my own spy network in motion, as well as my gophers. The CIA and the Pinkertons had _nothing_ on my people. Massawa was now mine. He just didn't know it yet.

I felt tired when I hung up. I knew I couldn't do much else tonight, and the lack of action made me angry. I missed Sookie. I missed how her very presence gave me purpose. She centered and calmed me. My sun. Now I was adrift and slowly descending into madness. Closing my eyes, I offered my love and devotion to the Radia in my chest, even if it was torturing me. It was my only piece of her.

"I love her," I muttered to it softly. "You're killing me, but I love you as well."

I did not expect it to stop hurting and it didn't. I imagined my blood in Sookie was tormenting her in much the same way.

Even though she was not with me, I could use this time doing something that would please her. I got on my phone again. Hadley's homey but humble digs had impressed me. The woman was trying to pull herself up. I had ordered her to do so, but she seemed to be taking it very seriously. She was working hard and making a clean life with her child and new mate. I put in a few calls. She would have a new car. New furniture. And Hunter would have a few new toys. Nothing major. I knew how Sookie felt about spoiling people. But I also knew that she loved her cousin and would like to see her happy. With that in mind, I simply told the car and furniture dealers to call Hadley and tell her she had an account with them now. I would not dictate models or styles to her. If she refused my offer, that was fine too. But Hunter was getting his toys. I paid my debts.

Reports began filling my inbox almost immediately after that night.

Massawa's people were good, but mine were better. They _were_ watching us, and not with the stealth that I'd expect from such a high-level employer. If we were friends, I'd inform Massawa of his lacklustre workforce. As it was, I'd send these idiots drink vouchers for the next time they sat in my bar and pretended to pick up giggling emos while clocking my movements.

My researchers also lent credence to Claudine's claim. After they attacked the dark vampire's past with all the clearance that a king with endless piles of money could buy, they reported to me that Massawa's movements for the last two hundred years (so far as they could be tracked) trended towards trouble. Literally. Whenever human conflict broke out, no matter where in the world, he was there.

This in itself wasn't too unusual. Many vampires were attracted to the disorder and blood that war brought down. Feeding was plentiful and detection was rare. Chaos provided an easy cover for us to move freely.

But all wars? All battles?

It stank. Especially from such an ancient as him. We didn't thrill as easily as newborns. Blood on the streets lost its appeal after several hundred years. Chaos, while exciting, posed many variables. It was easy to get distracted. Old vampires did not enjoy variables. We liked control.

Unless of course, it was part of our job description.

In the meantime, Massawa and the AVL entourage had moved onto South Carolina.

I spent two more nights with Sookie's track suit smothering my face.

Sitting like a fat spider poised on my web, waiting for the faintest vibration alerting me to my prey's movement, I steadily grew sicker.

I'd survived seven days without food before without particular hardship. But now, I knew in my bones that I was dying. It wasn't just food I endured without. How had I ever lasted a thousand years without Sookie? How had I enjoyed other blood? Other women? It was inconceivable now. My hands burned for her skin. My lips tensed in expectation for her soft kiss. My body bowed outward in the hopes of being nicked and sipped. My cock twitched at the slightest provocation. Her toothbrush in my bathroom made me hard, for fuck's sake.

Starvation, I could handle. Being exorcized of my soul, I could not.

Seven days. Soulless for seven days.

I was laying on our bed, trying to conserve my energy for the coming night. I'd spent almost no time outside. The sun did not interest me anymore.

And then suddenly... a miracle.

My blood.

My beacon.

Missing in action for a week, my bond with Sookie seared back to life with such hungry urgency that it punched me in the gut.

"Sookie," I gasped harshly, bolting upright.

_Yes. YES!_

It was her. She was back. Somewhere in this world, she had reappeared. I could feel her with the same dazzling clarity as when she returned from Faery over a month ago.

And she was near.

I didn't think. I didn't consider Massawa's spies. I didn't even use the door.

I shot straight through my ceiling and into the afternoon sun.

The bond throbbed hotly, yanking me south. I shot like a bullet towards it. The land moved in a blur beneath me. I saw nothing of it. A magnet was dragging me with such force that I could not have moved an inch in any other direction.

There was a patch of forest ahead. My blood reached for me somewhere inside.

"Sookie!" I roared as I collided with the ground like a comet. I spun around, orienting myself, before exploding to the right. "Sookie!"

"_Eric_!"

My blood jerked me towards a large cypress tree. I ran straight at it, scanning the high branches right down to the protruding roots. "Where are you?! Talk to me!" I bellowed.

I circled the trunk.

There, reaching out through a large knot hole at shin height, was a sweet, slender arm that I'd know anywhere. "Here! I'm here!"

I fell on my knees and clasped her hand in mine. "Sookie," I moaned reverently. "My god, Sookie."

I could see her face peeking through the hole, beaming through two rivulets of tears and laughing wildly. I pressed her hand into my face, kissing her palm and fingers in a frenzy. It went gold in a flash and shot me directly in the eyes. I roared with joy as her Light claimed me once again. The pain I'd suffered all this time disappeared in a blink, replaced by blinding pleasure. I'd already forgotten how incredible it felt. I ripped my shirt open and shoved her hand against my heart.

"AGAIN!" I bellowed at her.

She sobbed and shot me again. It exploded directly into the Radia surrounding my heart. I screamed as the ball of Light once again filled me with ecstasy.

"_AGAIN_!"

She laughed even louder and complied. I was nearly thrown backward as my heart convulsed in my chest.

She curled her hand around my neck and drew me down. I could tell she was straining upwards, like she wasn't tall enough to reach the hole. I crouched into the tree, craning my neck. We could almost kiss. Almost.

"Eric," she breathed in relief. "Where are we? Where does this hole lead?"

"South of our home. I came as soon as I felt you."

Warmth flooded her lovely features. "I knew you would."

"Are you okay, Sookie? Tell me Claudine did not hurt you."

She shook her head emphatically. "I'm fine. Just pissed. Get me out of here."

I gripped one side of the hole. "Stand back."

She looked at me with her huge, adorable Stackhouse eyes, then disappeared. I ripped one side of the knot. A chunk of wood cracked and broke away in my hands. I grabbed another side and ripped another piece. And another. This hole, or door, or whatever it was, became bigger. I reached my hand through.

"Grab me," I called to her. "Take my hand."

A small, warm hand clutched mine. I pulled gently. Her other hand came through the hole and I leaned down to link it around my neck. We rose carefully. I guided her other arm to hold my neck so I could support her staggeringly beautiful body, so swollen with my son that I gasped in shock.

She plastered herself to me, raining kisses all over my face and neck as I lifted us up and away from the tree.

I staggered back, weak from relief and shock and hunger. We fell togther, me on my back with her straddling my hips. Her hair fell around her face like a golden waterfall. Her tears struck my chest and broke my heart. She was wearing a white sheet that had been roughly sewn into a shapeless dress, much like the standard issue at a mental assylum. She levered her hands on my chest, then leaned down as much as her stomach would let her and devoured my mouth.

_The taste of her._

My fangs instantly clicked as ambrosia filled my mouth. I opened eagerly to her, my tongue making desperate passes over her lips, tracing her teeth. Her tongue met mine and curled around it, stroking wildly and driving me crazy. My hands gripped her belly, hidden under that hideous dress. Sookie grabbed them and brought them to the neckline.

"Rip it off," she panted against my lips. "I never want to see it again."

I growled in agreement, nudging her to sit up, I fisted my hands in the material before shredding it back and front. It fell away from her body and I was left speechless at the sight of my naked mate.

Most of her body was the same sleek, golden cocktease it had always been. Shapely and feminine. Arms and legs, little hands and cute feet. But the womanly aspects of her, breasts and hips and stomach, had been sculpted by Freya herself. The Viking goddess of love and beauty had blessed me with the most stunning pregnant woman in the world. With shaking hands, I splayed them wide over my son. He kicked my hand in response.

"I..." My words failed me.

Sookie was in no mood for words.

She put her hands on my torn shirt and pants, stripping them off in that delightfully expedient way of hers. Looking down at my own naked body, her eyes rounded with desire and she let out a sexy little whimper.

I had no time to wonder if any of this was a good idea. Exposed to danger. Heavily pregnant. Unpredictable from starvation.

Sookie gave not one fuck.

She yanked her dagger pendant free. She pulled me into a sitting position. She held me by the shoulders as she lowered herself, her pussy gripping my cock like a hot, vicious little fist until I was buried completely inside of her.

She cried out in joy, then stabbed me in the neck, throwing her face into the junction of my throat and collarbone, sucking hard on the wound.

Pleasure destroyed me. She left me no choice.

I roared and plunged into her neck, sinking my fangs in her flesh straight up to my gums.

I shook uncontrollably, unable to stop my hunger pangs. After a week of torture, I was being inundated with wave after wave of healing magic. I'd spent those seven days fantasizing about saving Sookie. How I would find her, and hold her, and stroke her cheek, and trail my fingers gently over her belly. Light as a feather. She'd been through hell and needed to be caressed and petted until she felt safe again. I had planned to be that safe place for her.

My eyes rolled back into my head. Sookie was moaning nonstop into my skin as she lifted and slammed onto my cock while gripping me by the hair, forcing my fangs deeper into her throat. My hands were bruising her hips as I held her steady and rammed upwards, the loud smack of our flesh puntuated by our groans. My dagger wound healed. She pulled back long enough to stab me again, just as deep, and locked her lips back over it.

"_Yesss_," I hissed against her.

"_My_ Eric," she claimed hotly, sinking her teeth in and shaking her head. "Fuck, I missed you so much."

I lifted from my bite and nuzzled my face against hers, purring loudly. "_My_ Sookie. We really need to stop meeting like this." And I meant it. If I had to endure one more separation from her, I'd surely die.

She gave a desperate little laugh before licking my neck of the last drops and hugging me fiercely. Slowing her fantic pace on my lap, she brought my mouth to her neck again. "Keep drinking. Thinking about how hungry you are gave me nightmares."

Our reconnected bonds were zinging crazily between us, two over-excited dogs bouncing off the walls and yipping like mad. I was hungry, it was going to take a lot to sate me over the coming days, but I did not want to take too much now. I didn't care if I supposedly couldn't hurt Sookie anymore, it wasn't worth the risk.

Sookie felt my restraint and shook me by the scruff. "No, dammit. Don't hold back. Drink, baby. Please. You _can't_ take too much." She leaned back and brought our lips together, kissing our shared bloods into our mouths. I moaned in pleasure. She broke it and smiled. "Let me feed my husband. Let me make you strong."

I hissed with love and pride before I settled back into her neck and continued. She murmured happily, as if she could possibly find as much pleasure in our act than I did. My fangs and cock were buried in hot liquid paradise. She continued to ride me gently so that I could feed without upset. The few brain cells I had left even tried to please her, massaging her tight, ripe breasts and skimming circles over the beautiful bump resting between us.

When she came, her Lit hands detonated at the back of my skull. I went rigid in her arms, ripping away from her throat as my spine snapped straight. I screamed louder than ever as her tight pussy squeezed me until I burst. My seed jetted in such hot, thick ropes that I feared we'd drown the boy.

We trembled, glued together with sweat and blood and come. I collapsed backwards. Since Sookie could no longer lay atop me, I grabbed the rags of her dress and laid them to my side before urging her to rest next to me. She followed, slotting her stomach against my side, her leg thrown over my hips. I groped for my shirt and found it nearby. I tucked it around her back and covered her bare chest. I would not suffer my woman being cold.

She burrowed into me, clutching me tightly. "Eric," she repeated in a sigh. "I love you so damn much."

My arms around her tightened in response. "I need to get you out of here. Where is Claudine? Is she in that hole as well?" I lifted my head to look back at the hole I'd ripped into the tree. I should have taken us further away from it. But my need to rebond myself to Sookie had been greater. I supposed I shouldn't feel too negligent. The fairy could simply pop anywhere we ran to.

Her head shook against my shoulder. "No. She's in Faery now, I think. She never stayed long."

"I'll kill her."

"Great. Take pictures."

I levered up to look down at my lover. I put my hand wide over her belly again. "Is he well?"

She smiled a very motherly smile and nodded. "If he inherits your wingspan, we have an Olympic swimmer on our hands. He's swum laps from here to the moon in there!" She tapped her womb.

I grew warm at her words. My wingspan. Yes. My arms had always made swimming quite enjoyable. I was suddenly impatient to teach him.

I looked up, scanning the trees. "We must go."

With great effort, she moved to sit up. I helped her, an overwhelming wave of protectiveness rising up in me. "Is her ranting about Massawa true, then?" she asked.

As we stood, I quickly put my jeans on, then helped her into my tee shirt. It almost fit her now. I gathered the tatters of the white dress and made a crude sarong, which I tied around her hips. "It's highly likely," I muttered low, tightening the knot.

I back off and looked at her. Even in men's clothes and a ragged sheet, she was heart-stopping.

I reached out and gently took her hand. I raised it to my bare chest. "Again?" I whispered.

A tremulous smile graced her impossibly pretty face. "As many as you want."

She shot me.

My Radia rejoiced, removing the final pieces of charred flesh I had suffered under its tyranny.

"I love you," I gasped at her, taking a step back to absorb the hit. "There's nothing left of me but my love for you."

She fell into me, suspending our son between us as her warm arms locked me in and made me whole. "Take us home," she said. "My hero king."


	54. Chapter 54

**A/N: We all know that intense trauma and relief leads to lots of...contact. Sookie's POV**

I can't explain what happened.

There I was, waving my arm in the real world, waiting for Eric's blood to get word to the man that I was back and in need of assistance, and then... boom. He was there. He said my name. He touched my hand. He fell to his knees and stared at me with that perfect face, strickened with disbelief and horror at me being trapped in a tree. He put his lips to my palm and I watched as my achingly beautiful man kissed it with more reverence than I'd ever seen in any church.

Before me, Eric had never put much stock in religion.

But _for_ me, he was the most pious, devout worshipper you'd ever see.

As our blood bond sparkled back to life again, I felt nothing of my cool pragmatist vampire. _That_ guy was history. Instead, I felt a hot mess of relief and devotion. He went to work on my fingers. The scruff of his neglected stubble was a wonderful contrast with his soft lips as they pressed into each pad like they were rosary beads.

As usual, I had no control over my reaction to such pure love.

My Light smacked him right between the eyes. Eric shouted with joy as it found its way to his heart and into my Radia, which I'd been summoning from the moment I reached out into the world. In the short time before he'd arrived, I sensed its fury at our separation and mourned how badly it must be punishing the man who so jealously defended it.

Now that he'd found me, it rewarded him with a blast of erotic sunlight.

No wonder he demanded more than one.

But I was already a goner. Reverent kisses on my hand weren't good enough. From the moment he touched me... I. Wanted. My. Man.

I didn't care about a rescue. I didn't care about finding safety. I didn't care about Claudine coming back. I didn't care how weak or unwilling Eric might have been to indulge me. I didn't know if it was due to pregnancy hormones, or adrenaline, or the relief of seeing him again after a week of solitude, or what.

All I knew right then was that my soul mate had found me. My soul mate with his huge dick. I needed to fuck both of those things or I would explode.

I attacked him.

He let me.

He took my clothes.

I took his.

I didn't want any sweet, happy foreplay or whispered affection as he took in my new shape. I could tell from his popping eyes that my belly amazed him. I could also feel that it triggered that inner possessive caveman that I teased him about. He liked what he saw. His hands had already claimed it as I threw myself at him and kissed him like a deranged Beetles fan.

I was bouncing on that _huge_ dick and drinking his blood before I'd even realized that I'd stolen them. After a week of food that tasted like nothing, Eric's spicy blood danced on my tongue like a sinful, boozy dessert. Cinnamon rum cake, only so much sweeter. I moaned as I gorged.

He let me, and then committed some thievery of his own. He bit me hard and drank like a glutton. Relief spilled into my pleasure. All this time, I'd been so afraid about him growing weaker by the day. I cried out, so happy for him. Hungry for him. I fucked and fucked, drank and drank, bled and bled. His hands continued to pay homage to me, even though I'd forced him to be more carnal that he'd intended. He told me with no words how proud he was of me for making such a big, healthy child, how beautiful I looked, how eager for _more_ children I made him. The novelty he felt told me that he'd never made love to a heavily pregnant woman before. The fact that it was me, and the fact that Adam was his, drove him absolutely wild. He felt like he was inside creation itself.

_Our_ creation.

In our desperate collisions, I came gasping his name. I accidentally shot him again as I did. But even though he roared like the scariest lion, I knew he was okay with it. As he unloaded his usual, impressive river of come, I wondered just how many children two immortals could make if each pregnancy took just one month. His demand for two hundred kids might be a conservative estimate, given how often we fucked like animals. Which was daily.

We rested, then dressed, and took off.

He carried me bridal style as he flew. I teased him for going slower than I'd ever seen and asked if I was _that_ much heavier. When he looked down at me, my heart melted. "You weigh nothing. You're that much more precious."

When we got home, I teased him even more for the new sun roof over our bed. He said nothing, merely ripped the plaster-covered bedding off the mattress, then gently laid me on it. He took back his shirt. He removed my ugly dress-made-skirt. Standing back and looking at me with no clothes on, he betrayed no emotion at all as he removed his jeans, then joined me on the bed.

I held out my arms, impatient to hold him.

He refused them.

Instead, he spent a good half hour slithering over the bare mattress, looking at me from every angle with hard, rapt curiosity. Sunlight dappled his skin as he moved in and out of the patch he'd created. Every time I tried to talk, he shushed me. Every time I tried to reach for him, he stopped me. I was forced to lay quietly, watching him move like a boa constrictor up and down my sides, over my head, between my legs. Occasionally, he'd reached out and drag a single finger over my belly button, or my breast, or my throat.

His cock was hard and angry during the entire examination.

I tried to clench my thighs to quell how wet it made me, but he stopped that as well. I blushed as he stared unblinkingly at it, all shiny and obvious. When he reached out again, he stroked his fingers through it with slow, scientific fascination.

"Eric," I gasped softly, flinching at the caress.

He didn't meet my eyes, watching his own fingertips trace my folds. "Do you..." he spoke low, "...have any idea... how astonishing the two of you smell?"

"Please come here. You don't know how badly I've missed you. We don't have to do anything if you don't want, but can I just lay in your arms?"

"Want to..." he echoed vacantly, dipping slightly deeper. I gasped, louder this time. He whispered, "It's obscene what I want to do to you."

"Please, baby... whatever it is, I want it t-,"

"Shut up," he interrupted. "Don't agree with me. Don't agree to be fucked until there's nothing left of you. Don't agree to be eaten in three big, wet bites. Don't agree to bear triplets because one child at a time is not enough. Don't agree to imprisonment in this room. To handcuffing your legs around my back. To never seeing another person who isn't me. To cutting my heart out and keeping it in your purse."

The images made me wetter. I mewled, daring to ride his finger a little.

He finally looked at me. "You should have stayed in your little house, in your little town, and lived a little life. Found a human man you could tolerate. Had children who repeated your path. You should have left me in my black, cold world. You should never have come to Fangtasia in your little white dress and glowing white soul. And when you did, you should have simpered at me. Or propositioned me. I could have ignored that, like I do all the others."

I rode him a little harder, staring into those blue eyes as he accused me in soft whispers.

"But you didn't, did you? You came looking for me. You _had_ to be beautiful. You _had_ to be dismissive. You infected my dreams. My wakefulness. I'd been a content vampire, Sookie. I was doing well, until I met you. And now? Now I'm a dark, cold man in love with your glowing, white soul. I think of nothing else but being close to you, and of killing those who impede it."

He stroked my thigh with a very un-cold hand.

"I want to eat you. And fuck you. And hold you. Make you happy. Make you scream. Make our children. Make you bleed. Make you mine, even if I have to swallow you whole. When you're taken from me, these feelings get stronger. Looking at you now, you perfect fucking woman, they're a very real threat."

I jutted my chin at him, unafraid.

As I moved my hips against his gentle petting, I spoke. "You think you're so scary, don't you? That you can look at me with that chilly blue glare and I'll go running back to Grandmother's house? Poor little Sookie? Doesn't know what she signed up for? Gets abducted and turns her vampire all crazy?"

I moved away from his hand and pushed myself awkwardly until I shuffled down the mattress, right in his face. "You're not safe, either. Every time I look at you, I want to tear you to pieces. When I hold you between my legs and arms, I'm trying to crush you. So help me, I want your bones to pop. Your blood is the best dessert in the world laced with crack. If you didn't heal so fast, I'd swallow a gallon. Your _perfect_ body triggers my bite reflex. I want to shake you between my teeth like a rag doll. And I could do it all. I could Still you, and strip you, and take my fuckin' time. And only after I'd had my fill would I climb on your dick and have a grand time makin' all your babies, babies I want so bad I can taste it. You think one at a time is enough for me? Knowin' you produce millions of sperm each time? Knowin' I only get a single _one_ of them, and the rest are children that will never exist?"

I cupped his scruffy face in my palms. His eyes fluttered at my touch.

"Fuck you," I murmured lovingly. "Never leave my side again. Never hold back, not when _all_ of you isn't enough. Quit staring at me like a recovered museum piece and git your naked ass up here so we can cuddle. I don't want to be inventoried. I want to be _held_."

"You still smell dangerously like fuckable honey, and you're giving me a fetish I didn't know I had." He lowered his head, his tongue darting out to lick the slope of my belly.

I nudged my legs until I'd corralled him between them. "Wouldn't you know it? I'm horny and you're hungry. And just so there's no misunderstandin'? I want you to finger-fuck me while feeding from my thigh. How's that for a dissmissive, glowing, white soul?"

His expression turned pained and he dropped his head to the bed, groaning. "Why was I cursed with such a tempting, exquisite mate? How could I ever refuse her?"

"Po widdle baby," I mocked through a smile. "Who knows? I might even make you fuck me again. I might get on my hands and knees and beg you to show me how much you missed me. I might watch you over my shoulder as you grab my hips and slide in, filling me up like only you can. And I'll come so easy, watching you pump against my ass like the damned soul you think you are. And I'll tell you I love you, because despite what you think, you'll always be Saint Eric to me."

His head shot up and he hissed at my words.

I got my fingers. He got his dinner. I got on my hands and knees and politely asked him to fuck me. He very politely obliged, driving his cock hard and deep while we cried out to each other. Over my shoulder, I babbled about how beautiful he was, making him promise to stay by my side forever, preferably in this bed. Rough, gritty praise escaped the prison of his clenched teeth; how he never wanted me thin again, how he was bound to me and our children for life as our protector, how nothing would ever separate us, come Hell or high water.

We fucked until we couldn't speak anymore. Then we came together.

Naturally.

**E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S**

Many hours later, the sunlight began to wane in the gaping patch in the ceiling.

Eric gathered me up and carried me to another bedroom. Not as big as his, but not nearly as ventilated either. The bed was comfy. He set me down on the edge, then retrieved some of the maternity pajamas I'd bought. They were silky and light purple. He dressed me slowly, buttoning over my belly until I was covered navel to neck. He didn't even leave the few on top open so he could admire my cleavage. He knelt and drew each pant leg over my calves and thighs, lifting me to slide them over my butt, before gently tying the drawstring in a little bow.

Despite my scolding, he kept taking stock of me. Our bond bubbled with his disbelief at how big Adam was.

When he was finally done, he moved between my legs, still nude, and dropped his head on my stomach. His arms crept around my back. As his hug completed, the tension that had lived in him for seven days just fell away. He sighed, his body heavier as he slumped against me. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and hugged him back.

"Tell me what happened," he said at last.

My fingers took up their usual position on his downturned head, delighted to have his hair to play with again. "I asked Claudine to come see me. I was cooking dinner for Jason when she showed. Things were fine until I mentioned Massawa. Then she just went crazy and popped us to this weird place. She said I'd be safe there until Adam was born." I ran my nails lightly over his scalp. He grunted in appreciation. "Why? What did she tell you?"

"The same. Except I nearly killed her."

"Did you feel me leave? I sure felt losing you."

He nodded into my lap. "I'd gouge the memory from my brain, if I could. The pain of losing you nearly killed me."

"Me too. I was a puking mess."

"Me too."

I tried to laugh softly, but it sounded wrong. "I guess we can't ever take separate vacations, then."

He didn't laugh with me. After a moment, he asked, "Where did you go? Were you hurt at all? Were you cared for properly?"

My fingers slid down to his nape and caught the knot in the leather cord that he always wore. "I don't know where it was. Claudine called it The Seam. She said it was a place between this world and Faery, that nobody except her even knew about it. She kept her library there. Big as the Ole Miss stadium, lemme tell ya. I spent every day reading her books, trying to find one that explained how to leave The Seam. I never found it. Instead, I threw a fairy hissy fit and told the books to show me out. I expected one to come forward with the info. Instead, the tome from Sophie Anne fell out of the shelves. Behind it was that hole you found me in. Talk about taking someone literally."

Without lifting his head, he reached behind his neck and brushed my fingers away, untying the cord. It dropped away. He did something with it in his lap, then reached behind once again and retied the knot. Once he finished, he plucked something from his lap and help it up. He never looked up as he presented me with my ruby ring. I'd been so consumed with his face, I'd never looked at his necklace and noticed it strung alongside his talisman.

"I believe this is yours."

I took it from him, slipping it back on my finger.

"Did it help at all? I didn't know what else to give Claudine. Anything I told her to convince you I was okay, she could have just read my mind and taken. I knew you would assume that," I said.

"No. It did not help. But it mattered. Thank you."

I bit my lip and looked away. I didn't want to think about how horrible our separation had been for him. Having no idea where I was, or how I was. At least I knew he was home and safe the whole time I was in that stupid seam. I speared my fingers deep in his hair, willing my comfort into him.

"I was warm. I was well fed. She gave me clothing and shelter. I wasn't tortured or anything. The worst thing I suffered, aside from losing you, was boredom and the occasional back ache. She put up with a lot from me and never once reacted in anger. You never have to worry about that. She pulled a bullshit stunt, but she did it thinking she was helping us."

"I will still kill her."

As I looked at the rippling, powerful body of the man in front of me, I realized for the first time since I'd been back that I didn't want that. Sure, Claudine had been a chick dick for kidnapping me, and I thought of nothing but her demise for a solid week, but now that I was free and back in the world where she claimed danger lurked, my appetite for her death had diminished.

"You said Massawa might actually be a problem. It's your turn to tell me what happened."

He recounted sitting in his office when I was taken. How he'd assumed I'd died and nearly ended himself had Pam not stopped him. I whacked the side of his head and made the decision to kiss Pam right on the mouth when I saw her. He told me about Ludwig feeding him my blood samples, about Hunter and his ability to see The Seam. I wished the boy was there now. I'd love to know when he'd heard me, or how he'd try to talk to me. I wished I'd known at the time. Eric talked about Massawa and his increasingly shady behavior, always poking around and asking about me, until Eric had his people confirm that he was indeed checking up on us.

My hands tightened around his head. "So what do we do?"

"We leave this house tonight. It's vulnerable to vampire entry. Our new home is now complete and is in your name. We will go there. We will contact Ludwig, Jessica and Pam to let them know you're home. I want the doctor to look at you and the other two will help stand watch."

"What about Jason? Or anyone else from Bon Temps? Are they worried about me?"

"Your brother was glamored to forget anything was wrong. I answered texts on your phone from your friends to avoid their panic. They assumed I was you and that you're busy lately. Only Hunter knows of your disappearance. And the fairy, Chloe. I attacked her in hopes that she might know where you were."

"Did you kill her?"

"No. She escaped before I could interrogate her."

"She probably told Mab about it, then," I concluded. "I'm guessing that put Claudine in some hot water. She was nervous about Mab finding out that she was actively sequestering the Scion instead of just jotting history down like she's supposed to."

I loosened my hold on him and stroked the blonde hair in my lap again. "When's sunset?"

"Two hours from now."

"Should we pack? I don't want to be here when Massawa and his people wake up."

He nodded against me, but made no move to rise. "Yes. Once we're in the new house, it will be a simple matter of keeping you there until the birth. He can stand on the driveway every night, if he wants to. Once you have Adam, I'll hold him up in the fucking window and wave."

"What about his day people?" I asked. "They can just waltz through any door they like, at any time."

"Day walkers I can handle. Massawa is my only superior. That is whom I must shore my defences against."

I chuckled. "He might be stronger, but he is in no way your superior. What about Claudine? She's not stronger, but she's definitely poppier."

He ground his teeth loudly. "Since I won't be leaving you ever again, she is welcome to try."

Eric finally looked up at me. As much as a vampire could, he looked exhausted. I gently ran my finger down the ridge of his nose. "Poor baby," I said sincerely this time. "Have you had enough blood? Do you still feel sick?"

"I'm fine. Just more emotional than I'm used to."

"I really did do a number on you, didn't I? Next time, I promise I'll stay in my little house in my little town and let the authorities do the investigatin'."

At that, he finally gave me a tired smile. "No. You're mine. You were always meant to be mine. If you hadn't come to me that night, I would have found you another way. We are one, lover. And while I might bitch and moan about being tamed by a darling fairy waitress, I would never have chosen anything less."

If I weren't so fat, I would have leaned down to kiss him. "Me either." I made a show of looking him over. "You might wanna throw some clothes on before we run for the hills. We don't want the neighbors waggin' their tongues."

He didn't have neighbors. He snorted anyway.

We packed what we could fit into his black SUV. Mine was mostly clothes. His was mostly money. I tsked him, then packed an extra bag of jeans and shirts for him. You can't wear Benjis, I don't what Eric says.

The sun slipped low on the horizon as we sped away from it. Aside from picking out a few interior ideas, I hadn't seen a single brick of our new place. I didn't even know where it was. As rain began to patter softly on the windshield, Adam did a double flip and pressed his foot into my crossed arms as I stared out from the passenger's seat.

It wasn't the greatest of circumstances, but maybe he was excited about moving day, too.


	55. Chapter 55

**A/N: Okay, people. First, my usual apologies for the late update. There are several reasons, the main one being that real life sucks and kept getting in the way of fanfic time. **

**The second is because, thanks to kjwrit, I NOW HAVE A WORDPRESS SITE! WOO HOO! If you google ficlit78, you'll find it. I'll still continue to post my stories here, but over there I'll be ranting and encouraging others to do the same, as well as posting the odd photo. Knowing some of my buddies, they'll besmirch my poor site with Skarsporn. (Poor me.) I might also post Easter egg one-shots over there. Anyway, check it out. It's so much prettier than this 1920s silent movie of a site. **

**Third, this chapter is a little different. But essential. Hence it took some lateral thinking to write. I won't try to oversell it, just hope you enjoy.**

**Massawa's POV**

I disliked the smell of this place. I always had.

Stale. Dank. The stench of vampire blood so pervasive that one could almost hear the screaming in the scent. Some of it had been spilt by weapons, but most of it had been burned out of its owner. Sadly, they had yet to invent a solvent that completely destroyed the odor, hence the cleaning staff could not carry the brunt of the blame. It was better than human blood, but then what wasn't? For the last few hundred years, I'd ceased to _see_ mortal men and women, watching instead fleshy jars of pennies jiggling about, with their mostly distasteful copper blood swilling inside them.

Such a pedestrian liquid.

I walked down a metal staircase, deep in the bowels of the Authority, far away from the shiny reception area and oddly normal-looking offices of her vampire employees. I was late for a meeting. One that required a rather... unorthodox boardroom.

I came to the door leading to a very long corridor. Taking out my elaborate set of keys, I selected the correct one and unlocked it. The rusty inner workings of the lock squeaked in protest as they turned.

Once on the other side, I closed it again.

_Vampire Confinement, Sublevel 3, Row 2, Cells 15-30_

Not that it read so anywhere. We were not in the habit of announcing to our guests where they were being kept.

Fourteen empty cells greeted me as I moved past them. Their overhead UV bulbs were dark. Their silver bars and linings had tarnished into a gunmetal grey. They would need to be polished soon. Nothing burned like freshly polished silver. And yet, their neglect was understandable. The Authority rarely had more than four "guests" at any given time. Overflow was unusual. It usually involved hostile takeover attempts, corporate disputes, or organized malcontents, like those who had objected to our revelation a few years ago. They came around. We _brought_ them around.

Number thirty sat at the end of my stroll. Solid concrete, eleven feet thick, met me at the far side. If by some miracle someone escaped their cell, they would require four sticks of dynamite to leave this hallway.

Keys still in hand, I carefully opened the silver door to thirty. Despite the ghost of blood in the air, the cell itself was clean. The cement floor rose to incorporate a rectangle meant for sitting or sleeping at the back. Regular furniture could not be risked, as inmates of all species were prone to fashioning any material to hand into weapons. Because of that, there was nothing else in the cell.

I walked inside.

I set to work.

I removed my black suit jacket and laid it out on the cement bed. I loosened my tie. I unhooked my cufflinks. I unbuttoned and removed my shirt. I unhooked my belt. I kicked off my wingtips. I placed everything out, making sure nothing wrinkled unnecessarily.

I touched absolutely nothing else. The walls were poison and the other surfaces were just as offensive.

I walked out nude.

The key hung in the door, its many sisters dangling from the ring. I closed the door and turned it. The click was loud with nothing to buffer it. I removed them from the lock. I tossed the entire set into the cell. They landed on my suit, seven feet behind locked silver bars.

As requested.

I stood patiently and waited. Neither cold nor modesty occurred to me.

I was kept waiting several minutes. I expected this, though I knew there was no innocence behind the tardiness. It was deliberate.

After I had been kept standing for a pointmaking period of time, my party arrived.

_Pop!_

A flash of light.

A glimpse of purple.

The smell of sunlight laced with... _sage_?

Hm.

A beautiful Fae woman looked at me from deep within the cell, her pale eyes and golden skin glowing in the dim. She lilac dress was lovely, though out of place in such industrial scenery. She scanned my body for any residual clothing I might utilize as mittens to grab the silver bars and rend them open to get to her. She looked over her shoulder at my suit and keys, set out to the letter of her instructions, in a place I was unable to reach them. She sniffed delicately. Our surrounding air confirmed that I was alone.

I continued to wait. This was a ritual she was never willing to forgo.

Finally, she met my gaze. "Magister."

"Chloe." I did not move to greet her or cover myself. "One day I would like to simply sit at a table and buy you a drink."

Her stiff posture told me she did not agree. "You may comport yourself better than most, vampire, but-,"

"And yet you insist on this level of protection from me."

She gave a light lift of her shoulders. "We are endangered for a reason."

"I can only claim a small number for myself, many years ago, and I doubt they were anyone you knew."

Her lips twisted. "We can meet at noon tomorrow, if you'd prefer. There's a café I'm particularly fond of. Excellent macchiatos."

"Alas."

"Then you'll simply have to endure my paranoia. I wouldn't be here at all if it weren't for-," she stopped speaking and looked away.

Her petulant expression brought out a sigh in me. She was only a few hundred years old. A child. Her behaviour was unsurprising. Still, it wearied me. Perhaps she was right to fear my fangs, though she would misunderstand my motives. I wouldn't eat her for her delicious blood. I'd eat her because she was irritating. She may have thought highly of herself, but Fae blood, in my opinion, was only marginally less boring that all other blood. Even humans didn't gorge on chocolate all the time. They too become harder and harder to delight as they aged.

Chocolate and Fae blood weren't persuasive enough to thrill old men.

"Then I suggest we get on with your meeting."

She nodded, grateful. "I've approached Mab. She was... unreceptive."

"What exactly did you tell her?"

"Nothing overt. I simply tested the waters; you weren't mentioned. I pointed out that Claudine was in the severe minority in her belief that the Coming should be embraced. Mab has taken council with her almost daily now, referring to texts and reselling the same points over and over. I wouldn't say she is winning the queen over, but she's pushing hard enough that Her Majesty is wrestling with her own conscience. To consider the execution of a Half Child is a serious matter, but to execute a possible saviour..." her sentence petered out as her expression hardened.

I had seen this look darken her pretty face many times. It usually took just one phrase for that look to twist into hatred.

"Sookie Stackhouse," I said.

Ah. _There it was_. Chloe's features turned ugly as the Half Child's name echoed in our tight chambers.

"You _said_ you could take care of her."

"_You_ neglected to inform me that Claudine was capable of hiding her so expertly."

"I didn't know! She's the Custos of Magic! How was I to guess that she could step through any looking glass she liked and disappear from our world? And to take a Half Child with her, no less?"

"Perhaps you could have anticipated better, knowing she was the Custos of Magic. Did you think her talent ended with card tricks? Flowers up her sleeve and a rabbit in her hat? That she could hide Sookie nowhere safer than a child's birthday party?"

The fairy made a noise of derision and flung herself backwards against the side bars, crossing her arms in defence. "I'm a Godmother, not a witch. My duty lies in protecting Hadley and her child, until he comes of age and is designated his own guardian. I am not _Claudine's_ keeper. You," she looked at me pointedly, "were supposed to handle Sookie. Now I hear even your vampire king is proving slippery. Honestly, Magister, you should look to your own house before impugning mine. If you'd killed him, she would be dead already. Coming averted. Problem solved."

I adjusted my stance slightly. I was not uncomfortable. The motion simply expelled the whisper of bloodlust she was unwisely injecting into my patience.

"To attack Northman is to liquify myself, or any vampire stupid enough to challenge a Radia. _You_ would have better luck, not that there is luck to be had. The man is protected from any attempt at killing him to injure his mate. You annoy me by having to explain what you already know about your own Fae bonds. Sookie is the only vulnerability. She _can_ be killed, provided her death isn't meant to take her from Northman." I paused. "What did he say when he came to you?"

She pursed her lips. "He ran me down, rabid dog that he is. He demanded to know where Claudine had taken Sookie. He asked if she was in Faery. I would have been summoned by Mab if she had been, so I knew then that Claudine had done something rash. She has always taken her wardship of Sookie very seriously."

I gave a small gust of laughter. "You clearly do not share it, even though she is related to your own ward. Tell me, is treachery common amongst the Godmothers? Do you often plot against each other's child?"

At that, she strode forward, moving into the light, her eyes glittering with disgust. "Sookie is not Fae. She is half mutt and pure evil. Her womb will bear the abomination that is a fairy-vampire spawn. It will be an afront to the natural world. It will unravel the fabric of life and replace it with poison and smoke. Claudine may favor the odds, but _any odds at all_ are unacceptable." She shuddered. "The supernatural world is getting along just fine without a savior. It will not get on at all if the child is Death. The choice is clear."

I did not like this woman.

But we shared an opinion.

"Northman is aware of my station," I spoke, once her scathing words had settled. "He's watching me. I've tossed him a few red herrings so that his people feel useful. But I haven't _dealt_ with him, as your wealth of tactical knowledge insists that I do, because you've proven so fucking incompetent at controlling Claudine that I must leave him free. He is the only one who can find her now. He won't rest until he does. We must simply be patient."

"We can't!" she hissed, smacking the bars between us. "Claudine is no fool! She's taken the Half Child into seclusion! She will not risk emerging until after the birth!"

My gaze flickered briefly at her elegant hands on the silver. "True. But I'd place my money on two bonded lovers desperate to find each other over the solitary vigil of one guardian. Miss Stackhouse will fight. Northman searches even now."

"_More _odds," she snorted disdainfully. "And the sun doesn't set for an hour."

I opened my hands entreatingly. "Let us not pretend we're ignorant of his day walking. You believe you're brimming with secrets, but I promise you know nothing that I am not aware of. A fairy Choosing a vampire, of all things? I am a Custos. I've read the tomes. Sookie Stackhouse has given Eric Northman the sun."

Her eyes rounded slightly, but she quickly recovered. "You can't know that for certain."

"You're wasting my time. Have you anything new to tell me, or are you simply here to pitch a bitch?"

"The Fae are now looking for Claudine and... Sookie," the name slithered through her teeth like a disgusting taste. "Mab is furious. She dithered for too long and now she is overcompensating. She'll imprison Claudine. She'll sequester Sookie and try to contain the Coming in Faery, as if the end of the world will recognize our borders and respect them."

This was telling. It meant the queen believed Claudine enough to risk the Coming in her own land. If she truly thought it spelled doom, she would eliminate the girl, or banish her to a corner of this world so horrible that Apocalypse would go unnoticed.

She looked at me plaintively. "Can the other Custos do nothing? Surely they know of some way to retrieve their sister, even if you do not. Some are Fae! Others are demon! Perhaps they know where-,"

I lifted a hand a cut her off. "You would summon bookworms to track a magician? Souls who swore their non-interference with history?"

Her eyelids lowered, smug. "_You're_ here, aren't you?"

"For my own reasons. I assure you, they do not share them. In any case, my brothers and sisters who enshrine literature, music, medicine and all the rest to the ages would do well to avoid a showdown between war and magic."

"Then we're left with nothing but the cunning of your vampire king to guide us," she sighed. "Magister, we are running out of time."

I watched her retreat to the back of the cell again. The shadows all but ate her.

"If she is found by your people, come to me. You will give me your blood, I will breach your world, and I will kill the girl myself."

She shook her head in the darkness. "It is defilement to surrounder our blood to vampires. And you would never survive an attack against our people. Even if you suceeded in killing Sookie, the guards would execute you on sight."

I chuckled. "Your concern for me is baffling. No matter. Once I've killed her, my objective will be complete. What happens to me afterward is immaterial."

She shifted uncomfortably. "And what if we don't find her? What if Claudine is successful? What if..." she looked frightened for the first time, "...What if the Scion is born?"

I shook my head slowly at her ignorance. "My dear Chloe, if the Scion is born, then my death, as well as everyone's death, will come for us."

"Would that we are spared," she whispered.

My phone vibrated in the pocket of my shed suit. I had no means of answering it, so I ignored it.

She looked over at it, then back at me. She gave my nudity a skeptical once-over. "You really _are_ different from other vampires, aren't you?"

"I'm simply old."

She shook her head. "It's more than that. You are very... poised."

"I'm very, _very_ old."

"You'd make an excellent Fae. Perhaps even a king. You understand what needs to be done and are not afraid to act."

"And you'd make an excellent vampire. You are bloodthirsty and tend to blow your stack."

She made a face. "Perhaps when I give you my blood to enter Faery, you'll get your chance to turn me. Then we'll see what kind of vampire I'd be."

I smiled blandly. "I no longer Make. Nothing personal." I bowed, then held out my hand expectantly. "Until next time."

She looked at my hand. Her anxiety ratcheted up as she turned and walked back to my things and picked up my keys. "Soon, Magister. And not soon enough."

She popped away, throwing my keys into the air. By the time I caught them on the other side of the bars, she was gone. I opened the cell and redressed. The room smelled much more pleasant than it had ten minutes before. The next vampire occupant was in for a treat, despite his capture. I exited and relocked the door. As I walked quickly down the dark corridor, I checked my phone.

The message was from one of my shifter spies. He had a useful preference for birds. Unusual in shifters, as flight was hard to master. But he was clever and had no interest in shifting into swallows or robins, with their constant need to flap and short-range capability. He was drawn to the endless hours and minimal energy needed to glide as an eagle.

At my command, he'd been circling Northman's home for days.

A smile grew on my lips as I read.

NORTHMAN FLEW OUT IN DAYTIME. TOO FAST TO FOLLOW. RETURNED WITH GIRL. HEAVILY PREGNANT. LEFT FEW HOURS LATER IN CAR. FOLLOWED. SENDING COORDINATES. REMOTE HOUSE. HEAVY SECURITY. BOTH INSIDE. INSTRUCTIONS?

I left the lower floors and made my way to my private office.

GIRL TELEPATHIC. VAMPIRE OLD. DO NOT APPROACH. AVOID DETECTION AT ALL COSTS. SURVEY PROPERTY. WATCH FOR OTHERS. I WILL ARRIVE SHORTLY.

I also texted my people watching Pam, Jason Stackhouse, the human doctor, the red-headed infant vampire, and the telepathic child. If Northman contacted any of the adults for help, they would be followed and possibly taken or killed, depending on the situation. If Mab proved to be difficult and procured Sookie before I could, I would take the boy child as a hostage and/or a key to Faery.

The Coming would never come.

If I had to murder this entire town and burn out all of Faery, then so be it. I may have had my fill of killing, but it would be done without hesitation. The end of the world as we knew it was a powerful deterrent.

I simply hoped that the only death required to prevent it was Sookie's.


	56. Chapter 56

**A/N: The ficlit78 Wordpress site is up and humming now! Be sure to check it out! **

**We're back to our couple now. Can you feel it? The end? After two and a half years, it's finally sneaking up on us. Jeez, what will I DO with myself when that happens? Eric's POV  
**

The sun was still on our side when I finally turned down the long, isolated road that led to our new home, but just barely.

The road was narrow. Deliberately so. The side mirrors on my SUV barely cleared it. Tall evergreens loomed on either side, making sunset seem closer than it was. When building our new home, Herveaux's crew has asked if I'd wanted a wide, straight driveway with two lanes and ornate street lamps to guide guests to my home. Rich, prickish show-offs must butter most of their bread to ask such questions unsolicited. I'd written back and politely refused their self-aggrandizing embellishments. No one was driving a tank up to my goddamn doorbell. Instead I confused them by asking for a mansion-come-fortress that was accessible by the thinnest sliver of cleared forest. Easily barricaded. Easily torn up to prevent convoys. Lost tourists would feel as though they'd accidentally turned onto a seldom-used and unwelcoming access road. Enemies would feel claustrophobic as their cars were forced to crawl one by one through the three-mile bottleneck I'd created.

They would not be able to turn around. They could be picked off, shooting blindly into the trees as I launched into each driver seat and turned him into curly fries. They would be forced to scatter. Running in the dark. Or now, even in the light. Back at the T junction where the road had started, I'd string their corpses upside-down like butchered hogs from my mailbox.

DO NOT FUCKING DISTURB

Or perhaps...

FUCK THE DOG. BEWARE OF VAMPIRE.

I'm sure it would clash with Sookie's preference for country rustic, but for Adam, she might concede that a few decorations needed to send a stronger message than simply _Bless This Mess_.

_Sookie..._

My eyes wouldn't stop darting to her in the seat next to me. She was far away. Her lovely profile looked pensive as she watched the darkening forest. The line of her jaw was so finely cut, I wanted to reach out and trace it from beneath her ear to her chin. Her hands rested lightly on her belly. With each turn of the wheel, her fingers tightened slightly, and only relaxed once the road straightened.

I could not tell her in words how proud I was of her soft, fierce maternal instincts. It was a maddening combination. The rounded beauty of her only served to hide the poisoned briars I felt simmering in our bond. She loved my son. She was every bit as lethal as I was to anyone wishing him harm. I shuddered, thinking of those warm little hands as they stroked and Lit me up, only to flick at the wrist and torpedo other vampires or fairies into smoking craters without even removing her lips from mine. And yet, she now moved in slow yet graceful steps around me, her eyes warm and peaceful, as if the Earth was whispering the secrets of life in her ear. Fuck, she was magnificent.

The car slowed as I let my gaze linger on her longer than was strictly safe. Even in lavender pajamas, she outshone every woman ever born.

"You keep squinting at me and your face'll freeze that way," she admonished without looking at me.

"I can't help it. You are so fucking beautiful. I want you so much."

She smiled in that serene, I-know-everything-now mien she was developing. "You talk like I'm holdin' out on you. I couldn't even put a number on how many times we've made love. Plus I'm huge and we're in the middle of an all-or-nothing battle to save our baby. I suggest you direct your thoughts somewhere more appropriate."

We fell into silence for a minute.

"One-four-one."

She looked at me, perplexed. "What?"

"Putting a number on it. It's 141. Approximately."

"Approximately?"

"Straight-up fucks where we came with my dick in your pussy. Oral brings it to 163. Anal," I winked at her, "to 164." I shook my head. "I must remedy that last one. It's disgracefully low."

Sookie said nothing, merely looked at me with scandal etched across her features, a blush rising up to her hairline. "So many?" she whispered.

"So few."

Her blush deepened. "Jeez Louise."

"You're making it worse. Show me your breasts."

She punched me. "People probably coming to kill us!" she reminded me in a shriek.

"Then we must gather ye rosebuds while we may. And you have so many rosebuds, Sookie. Either play with your nipples or fuck my hand. I can't suck your clit, so I'll settle for petting it."

She made an odd noise of frustration, amusement and rage. She wrapped her arms around herself and huffed, throwing her face against the window.

Part of my vulgarity was in jest. I wanted to lighten the mood. But the other part was only stopping because it wasn't practical to pull over and fuck Sookie in her condition in the tight constraints of a car.

And people were coming to kill us. She made it so easy to overlook that probability.

I sighed and used my hand for something far less enjoyable and activated my Blue Tooth.

Pam answered immediately.

"I found her," I said.

"The fairy," Pam's voice dripped with murder and glee at the thought of Claudine or Chloe in my clutches after hunting them for a week.

"_My_ fairy," I specified. "Tinkerbell found a way to contact me. I have her with me now."

My Child inhaled sharply. She never did that. "Thank God." Whom she never acknowledged. "Where are you?"

"Aardvark," I gave her the location of our new house in code. "Get there now."

"I'll leave the minute the sun sets."

"Bring Jessica."

"What the fuck for?"

"Back-up."

"For what? Varsity cheerleading?"

"She's proven useful. Fuck her age. Everyone who ever underestimated her is dead."

She gave a pained hiss. "Fine. Anything else? Ice cream and Amanda Bynes movies?"

"I don't know who that is. But fuck off." I considered a minor punishment. "And yes. Bring ice cream. For Sookie." I looked at my lover questioningly. She merely looked at me.

"Pralines and Shut Up and Get Here Already," she told Pam.

"Spoilsport," I rebuked.

"Peeeeoople coming to keeeeeeell uuuuuus," she sang sarcastically.

"Fine. Skip the ice cream, Pam."

"Shit. I'm already agonizing in the frozen isle that they don't have her flavour."

No, she wasn't. She was pacing impatiently on the cement floor of our basement, waiting for dusk.

"How are we for floral arrangements?" my Child asked.

_Code for weapons_. "Well stocked," I answered. "Very."

"Should I drive straight up?"

_To the house_. "Yes. You know where." A sunken garage thirty yards from the main house.

"Coming."

We hung up. I called Ludwig.

"I found your patient," I said once she'd picked up.

The doctor was quiet for a moment. "Is she well? Unchanged?"

Christ, I appreciated people who kept their conversations circumspect. "Yes. To both."

"I'd like to see her."

"Yes. Tonight. She doesn't have much time."

"Text me the address."

_No need._ "Aardvark."

During Sookie's absence, I took the liberty of glamoring the doctor with any information she might need, then made her forget unless prompted. The word struck her sleeping memory. I heard it in the change of her breathing. "On my way."

I deactivated the call.

I hit one final number.

"Hello?" the wolf's deep voice answered.

"Mesopotamia."

The line between Herveaux and I went quiet. At last, the pre-programmed were responded to the command I had embedded several days ago. "Okay."

The car filled with silence once again as the call ended. Sookie didn't ask about the strangeness of my conversations.

In the final mile of the rib-thin road, she finally spoke. "He knows everything, doesn't he?"

I didn't need to ask whom she meant. "Probably. ...Yes."

"Is there any way to fight him? I mean really? How well protected must he be? How many soldiers can he raise with a phonecall?" She looked at me, fear rippling those dark pools. "Are we fucked, Eric?"

"We've been fucked before, yet here we sit. Those that did the fucking are now fertilizer."

"Nothing like this. Massawa is..."

"Vampire. Limited. Known."

She snorted. "In the way a bullet is limited and known. I can put one in my pocket. Doesn't mean it can't shoot me."

"I simply meant that we are lucky to know what we're up against. Yes, he's powerful. But not unstoppable. His weaknesses are the same as mine." I paused. "Mine, before you."

She swallowed, thinking carefully. "I know he's not stupid. But... could you track him in the daytime? Find where he rests? If you could just stake him in his sleep, that would tie this whole mess up nicely."

I smiled. "I would need more time than we have. That, and I'm not leaving you alone to go sniff out the entire state. He could be anywhere."

She turned away. "He won't be far."

"I know."

"If he knows everything, doesn't that mean our phones are tapped? That he's watching every single person we love? Can't he just follow Pam and Dr. Ludwig right to us? That's what I'd do, and I'm no military genius," she said.

I considered, then arranged my words carefully. "I'm assuming at this point that he is already aware of your abduction... and your return. My house is known. I'm positive he's been watching it for weeks. He would have been stupid not to. He played along at our meetings because he knows he cannot fight me directly in order to hurt you. Just as I'm sure he knows about our new house. I was required to take a royal residence when I became king, so tracking my dealings with Herveaux would have been as easy as glamoring any of his crew. I used an alias, but the right questions would have led him to assume it's mine. A large home quickly built in the middle of nowhere. He only needs access to satellite feeds to draw conclusions."

"You hired Alcide to build our house?" she smiled kindly.

"Yes."

"Aw."

"Fuck aw. He builds a decent house."

"You loooove him. I should have known you'd leave me for a brunette. Prettier than me, too, that bitch."

I looked at her warningly. Sookie chuckled.

"So," she continued, "You're saying all this stuff like you know about it, but aren't planning for it."

"Au contraire."

"Really? Pop quiz, hot shot. The Custos of War knows where our house is. Instead of bothering with soldiers and a messy siege, he simply rents a fighter jet and RPGs the shit out of it. Boom goes Sookie, Eric, Adam, and the whole Coming. Your plan?"

A small smile played on my lips. "You've been gone a week. I managed to keep myself busy."

"Not an answer."

"All military and small aerial craft within one thousand miles have been disabled."

"Shut. The fuck. Up."

I shrugged.

She snorted. "That's not even possible. The U.S. military would have had a shit! And fixed them immediately! And that would have taken hundreds of people to do! There's no way!"

I shrugged again. "We didn't rip out the wiring, darling. Such sabotage would have drawn attention. Most of them fly perfectly fine, though all of them now have trackers on them. I can watch them all from my phone, if I want."

"There's an app for that?"

"There's an app for everything. And no plane anywhere near us is capable of launching missiles. The pilots won't know until they try, however, which is almost never. All civilian craft have been hindered in equally stealthy ways, with eyes watching in case our tampering is discovered. An air assault of that kind won't be possible for about a week." I looked at her belly. That was all the time we needed.

"What if he just used a regular plane and aims its nose at our kitchen window?"

"The house has radar and ground-to-air defences. I'll see him coming. I'll light him up long before he gets to us."

She gestured through the window. "And if he brings a helicopter and a rocket launcher?"

"I can catch a helicopter."

"What about the rocket? Can you catch a rocket?"

"Even if I miss, it will only take out the house above ground."

She gave me a look. "Sooooo... there's another house under the house?"

"No, lover. There's a citadel under the house. One that Massawa knows _nothing_ about."

"One that can withstand bombs?"

I give her a look. She stroked her belly, craning into the windshield as the treeline cleared and the house broke on the horizon. We saw it at the same time. Sookie let out a soft murmur of surprise as the sunset illuminated its warm, cream-colored paint.

It was an imposing, beautiful mansion in the style of a grand plantation home.

Graceful pillars. Double front door. Long, slithering ivy climbing the outer walls (which I'm sure had been trained with wire ties until it took to the façade naturally). Fully mature fruit trees along the last hundred yards of the driveway (I thought Sookie might enjoy canning, or at the very least, let the children pick their own food).

A small hand snaked over and covered mine on the wheel. It squeezed.

"You show me the most beautiful house in the whole world, then tell me some asshole is going to level it?" Her voice was breathless with wonder.

I was pleased. The house was nothing to me, I'd build her twenty just like it, but her happiness tipped into my indifference and made me see the mansion with her eyes. It was very pretty. I looked forward to making a life with her there.

"I promise to protect it as best I can. Otherwise, I'll rebuild it exactly the same."

I hit a pale blue button in the steering wheel console. Just to the side of the house, the ground rumbled and came alive, dropping open to reveal the entrance to the underground parking structure, which in turn led to the aforementioned citadel, deep in the hillside.

"Jesus Christ in Heaven," Sookie muttered as she watched.

"What were you imagining? A couple of pistols in our belts and our mattresses plugging the windows?"

"I certainly wasn't expecting a Bond villain's lair."

I maneuvered the car onto the underground ramp, hitting the button again once I cleared it. The ground swallowed us up. Visual detection from outside was impossible. Once inside the massive, well-lit cavern, I parked in my circular array of other vehicles, each selected for a specific reason: speed, power, armor, offence, inconspicuousness, etc. Sookie looked over the collection with a blank eye. She noticed a large command center against the wall, its monitors flickering dozens of live feeds while other machines I knew she wouldn't recognize buzzed and churned out endless information about local ground and air traffic, hits on local stores' inventory and purchases (certain combinations of items triggered an alert), hacked security footage from all airports, car rentals, vampire establishments, etc., and of course my own security systems input as well as my armory and munitions network.

I exited the car and zipped to her side, offering my arms to support her weight as she gingerly extracted herself. She took my help, her eyes never leaving the nerve center of the entire property.

"I take it back. This isn't a lair, it's a bat cave. You gonna tell me Alcide built that, too?"

I shook my head. "Lockheed Martin. Herveaux's crew built ten feet above it. They never had a clue."

"Lockheed Martin? Are they moving out of space programs and Pentagon securities and into gentrified residences?"

"If I visit the company's president and glamor her, and she then authorizes the construction from their engineers who will never remember, yes."

"All inside a month?"

I held her to me, even as she angled her head around me to continue to stare. "And you laughed when I only packed money. It's the most versatile tool known to man."

She finally looked back up at me. "Food?"

"Enough to feed you for eight months."

"Water?"

"Three separately-operating wells."

"Weapons?"

"Everything short of an H bomb."

She inhaled slowly, then noticed as her lungs inflated. "Oxygen? Can they access the ventilation?"

"There's an air-independent system, much like those aboard nuclear submarines. You cannot be smothered, poisoned or gassed."

"Power?"

"Generators. Even deeper underground than we are. Impossible to knock out without another kicking in."

She was right to ask these things and I enjoyed answering them. Not only did I get to watch the razor edge of her mind slice into every problem and peer into its innards, looking for still more problems, but I had the additional pleasure of allaying her fears. I was already used to protecting every last inch of my own ass and had been doing so with all technologies available for a very long time, but now I had the honor of considering my living, breathing family's needs as well. Lockheed's people covered most of it, having planned for human frailty from the inception of their company, but I kept my mind sharp and added my own measures, knowing our foe wasn't something as quaint as an Iraqi rebel army.

Sookie turned slowly, taking in the space, noting silently that there must be other rooms, living quarters and storage areas, that she wasn't seeing. She sighed wistfully. "Maybe Claudine was right. This already feels like The Seam, except there's no sky and Massawa knows _exactly_ where we are. Maybe I should have just stayed there until this whole thing was over."

Her words stung.

I took her chin between my fingers. She was already looking at me, feeling my pain. "You want to go back?" I asked, appalled.

She did not answer immediately, which shattered my heart and made all of my hard work to keep her safe feel like a piss-poor offering, completely inadequate. She preferred her prison to my fortress.

She sighed. "No," she replied softly. "I wouldn't survive it if I lost you again. I know you'll protect me and I know we'll get through this somehow, I just hate this guy. I don't want to live in an underground steel box, anymore than I want to live in Claudine's bookcase. I want to live in the house above us. I want to sit on the porch with you, and drive a car without a gun turret on the roof, and have babies without people trying to kill them."

She couldn't hug me head-on anymore, so she cuddled into my side, her head gently rubbing into my ribs, her belly bumping against my groin, soft as a balloon. "I want to be with you, no matter what. But I want to be with you _alone_. Why can't everyone else just go away?"

I clutched her to me tighter than necessary. "I will kill him for you. And then I will forever kneel at your side like a dog and tear the throat out of the next, and the next, until no one dare even look our way. I will give you the life you want. I promise you."

She hummed in amusement. "We'll get a real dog. You can just stay my husband."

"You own me. Surely that makes me a pet of some sort."

At that, she snorted. "I dunno. Is it legal to own a T. Rex?"

"Perhaps. If you register me as a seeing-eye T. Rex."

"Great. I'll have to rename you though, since I already have a pet named Eric."

"Sadly, you don't. Your former Eric is now Cheeseburger, thanks to his new owner. I approved it. I'm now your one and only Eric."

Her arms tightened around me. "You always were."

We stood silently. I let my lips wander over her hair and my hands over her back.

Muffled against my shirt, she muttered, "Aardvark? Mesopotamia? What the hell is going on? You've obviously thought of everything, so how will our people be safe?"

Ah, yes.

I took her hand, intent on giving her a brief tour. The topside house would have to wait until morning, as sunset was already upon us and I would not risk her until the sun banished some of our enemies into the ground. And after I showed her our comfy bed, our sunken bathtub, and where she could make herself over two hundred different combinations of meals, I was going to sit her down, massage her swollen feet, and tell her about the plan.


	57. Chapter 57

**A/N: I suck suck suck and can only beg you to forgive me. Me, my hubs and two boys came to the states for an extended holiday vacation. This house has ZERO room for privacy and thus my ability to write has been struck down for the last THREE MONTHS. I have another five weeks while we work away from home before we actually GO home, so I have no idea when I can update again, but I've owed you this forever, so hopefully you haven't totally forgotten the entire plot thanks to my crappiness. **

**I heart you this Valentine's. Here's Sookie's POV. **

Well, I had to give him credit. The man knew how to build a kick-ass bat cave.

As Eric guided me through the enormous layout of that fortified basement (if you could even call it something as everyday as a basement), I once again congratulated myself on bonding with something more than just a pretty face. The brain operating behind it bordered on genius. The War Room, as I dubbed it, where the car fleet and stacks of Skynet computers resided, was very impressive. But as he led me through hallways the led to the living areas, I had to credit him with a whole other level of smarts.

Aside from the lack of windows, it could have been mistaken for a lovely, spacious home.

I don't know what I was expecting. Maybe cinder block walls with army cots pushed up against them, along with skinny metal shelving units full of freeze-dried rations. Scratchy wool blankets. Gas masks hanging from bent nails. A box full of mismatched walkie-talkies operating on corroded batteries. A plain clock being the only decoration, its ticking growing louder with each pass, slowly driving the bunker inmates insane.

In short, a 1950s budget bomb shelter.

I really was an idiot. If I'd given any real thought to it, what I saw now is exactly what I would have expected from someone who did _nothing_ by halves.

We first walked into the living room. The walls were painted a warm grey, complete with some nice landscape photographs of wild places: a meadow, a turbulent surf, a misty cliff, an autumnal forest. The fat leather sofa was a deep charcoal, its Lazyboy tags still hanging from its back. My brow climbed into my hairline as I flicked the tag and looked at Eric. It wasn't like him to sacrifice beauty for comfort that his body didn't need.

He cocked his head at me like I _was_ an idiot. "For your back. And to help your circulation. Pregnant women should elevate their feet when they can."

I smiled, but said nothing. Instead, I simply walked by him, lifting his hand to kiss his knuckles before dropping it and moving to the huge tv across from the sitting area. The dark screen was surrounded by a Blockbuster outlet. Any movie I could possibly ever want to see. More than I'd ever get to in one lifetime (luckily I now had several). I grinned wide and turned to my provider once again.

"Shame on you. I prefer books."

At that, he matched my grin. "It's a good thing I had a Barnes & Noble installed as well."

"You _better_ not have. I like a decent selection of_good _ books, not fifty copies of _The DaVinci Code_."

"Snobby little bookworm."

We exited that comfortable room by a side door and entered a modest library, stuffed floor to ceiling with classics, new and old, plus a collection of noir crime novels and, I noticed, the occasional brain Twinkie romance paperback. After seeing Claudine's mammoth library, I would never again be impressed by a book depository in terms of size, but me-oh-my did this room make me a million times happier than her creepy book mausoleum.

"This is what I'm talking about."

"I'm glad you approve."

"You knew I would. You sure know how to fancy up a foxhole."

"I've had practice."

I took his hand as I waddled into the hall towards what I assumed were bedrooms. The first was clearly ours. Big and cozy, with a bed the size of a double barn door. The hues were inviting and the chests and wardrobes were rich woods that no doubt cost a fortune. I walked over to a bureau and peered into the mirror gracing its top. Smirking at Eric in the reflection, I pulled the top drawer open, confirming my suspicions. It was already full of women's clothes. I opened the next. And the next.

Chock full.

"You really do think of everything, don't you?" I asked him through the mirror.

"I think of you. That's all," he answered my reflected twin.

"What's in the other rooms?"

"Storage. A kitchen. A pantry. A bathroom." He paused, lowering his voice an octave. "A nursery."

I shivered. "You really think we'll need one? Down here? Once Adam is born, won't all of this be over? Massawa wants to kill me before he's born, and when he fails, then he's lost. Adam _can't_ be killed once he breaks loose."

He stalked towards me. Once he loomed deep into my personal space, he reached behind me and closed the remaining open drawer. "I don't skimp on your safety simply because some ancient dime novel written by a melodramatic kidnapper says it's okay to do so. Adam is mine. His brothers and sisters are mine. This place may not just serve us now, but from future enemies as well. Which is why there isn't just one child's bed in that nursery. There are _forty_ in storage. The pantry has fifty-gallon drums of formula. The deep freeze has a swimming pool of applesauce. I don't know what the fuck _Yo Gabba Gabba_ is, but we have every doll they make, right next to the chessboard I will teach them on. We will_ always_ be prepared." He trapped my belly between us. "You. And my little ones. Nothing will ever take you from me again."

I craned back all the way, taking him in. "Their mother can't play chess, either."

"We have many years for you to surpass me."

"What do I get if I ever win?"

His clutch on my belly slackened and his fingers travelled north, teasing the underside of my heavy breasts. "You'll earn the prize of a vanquished chess master. It's up to you to dictate terms, as you will have slain my army. I'll be helpless."

I hummed with excitement at the thought of my mighty warrior beaten and forced to his knees by my superior abilities at a game where I couldn't even name the pieces yet. That didn't stop me from imagining taking one of those pieces and, with great ceremony, knocking Eric's king flat. The look in his eyes when I beat him for the first time. The surprise. The pride. The slight annoyance. And I'd laugh, throw myself back into my chair, cross my legs, fold my hands, and tell him that because the vampire king had let his soapstone king fall, his ass now belonged to _me_.

Eric felt my wickedness.

His hands fully cupped my breasts, teasing the tips. "Remember, I will beat you many, _many_ times before that happens." His blue eyes sparked. "And I am not lenient towards prisoners."

"Are you open to bartering sexual favors in_ exchange_ for leniency?" I giggled as I pushed into his hands.

"Artful...little...whore," each word dripped with mild reprimand. "Think you can manipulate me so blatantly?"

I tapped my chin and rolled my eyes upward in thought. "What if the favors lead to babies? Will you be lenient if I'm making more of your rag rats?"

He dragged a ragged hiss through his teeth, seething. He was much easier to manipulate than he thought. All it took was the promise of more children. Children I was more than happy to leverage for a kinder sentence. "You'd haggle for better food and more cigarettes with the lives of my baby angels?"

I couldn't help it. I giggled louder. "Damn skippy. And I want sole access to the tv remote, too. Take it or leave it."

He lost his fight to look stony and grinned. "You are a cruel thing. I concede. When I best you - _the many times I best you_ - I will be merciful. Provided you fuck me constantly and bear me more angels."

"Taskmaster. Done." I stepped away from him. "Anyway. This is lovely. It's hard to remember we're digging in for a fight."

His phone made a strange noise from his pocket. He took it out and looked at it, then frowned.

"What?"

"There's a ping."

"What's that mean?"

His frown deepened as he took my hand and led me (at my penguin pace) back to the War Room. "That someone is here."

"Could be one of ours."

He shook his head.

We walked over to the Skynet setup and Eric leaned down to two married computer screens which were divided into several different security feeds, all of them monitoring the house and property. He guided the mouse to a particular square and clicked on it. The screen filled with one camera angle, looking straight up at the darkening sky.

He didn't look at me as he explained. "The cameras don't just watch. Their software records all movement. The wind in the trees, passing cars, animals. The technology can decipher which are suspicious. It pings when certain movements linger for longer than thirty minutes."

We watched the fine pixels in their cloudy arrangement. I squinted. Surely the computer knew better than to think hovering clouds were a threat. But at that moment, a large bird of prey soared lazily across the image, easily one hundred feet above us.

I breathed a sigh of relief. "It's just a hawk."

Eric's cold eyes didn't leave the screen as the bird made a large, unhurried circle. I tugged his hand. "Come on. I need to sit and you still need to tell me what's going on."

He ignored my pull. Instead, he sightlessly pulled out the rolling chair from the desk and gestured at it while he leaned down and rapidly typed on the keyboard. I frowned, but took the offered seat and watched. Another screen popped up with a lot of technical babble scrolling too fast for me to read, with the exception of the header, which blinked REMOTE ACCESS.

"What are you doing?"

The video feed of the hawk was instantly overlaid with a red mesh pattern. A gun sight target also appeared, zeroing in on the hawk, settling right on top of it as it flew unaware.

"Eric, don't!"

But it was too late.

He hit Enter.

I didn't hear the report as a rifle fired from a remote location somewhere, probably because we were surrounded by mountains of steel and cement, but I saw the result as the bird keeled harshly to one side, the bullet tearing into its feathery body, before it plummeted toward earth.

I jumped to my feet and smacked him hard on the arm. "_Why the hell did you do that_? It wasn't hurting anybody! Jesus, Eric, you can't just kill innocent animals because they happen to by flying over our-," I gasped as camera angle changed, following the bird's trajectory as it fell.

Only it wasn't a bird.

For the last fifty feet, I watched in horror as a naked man pinwheeled in the air, crashing into the ground with a sickening burst of blood.

With rock-steady hands, Eric calmly pulled up another camera, one with a better view. Through my fingers, I saw a broken body, bent and twisted like a branch pile, blood flowing freely from his head and snapped legs.

"Oh, my God."

Eric zoomed in.

Next to the man's bare feet lay a phone.

Satisfied, Eric stood up, glaring at the screen like he wanted to spit on it. He turned to me. "I apologize. What were you saying?"

There wasn't much sarcasm in his question. He was merely making a point. My anger changed instantly to gratitude as I bent myself around Adam to hug him as hard as I could. "How could you even tell? He was just a bird. How did you know he was a shifter?"

He petted me. "The security system catalogues atypical behaviour, even in animals. That eagle had been circling our property for two hours, despite the headwind. It's almost dark. Eagles don't hunt at night. I didn't see the phone in his talons, but the other clues were enough. Had I killed an actual eagle, I would have mourned it. But, I killed a dumb fuck shifter who didn't think to vary his flight pattern while he spied on us."

"You're amazing."

"Yes. But not for killing a dumb fuck shifter."

"Still."

He pulled back, his eyes angry but kind. "We have very little time. What would you like to know?"

"What's Aardvark?"

"A nocturnal mammal native to Africa."

"Very little time, remember? Don't make me punch you in the balls," I said.

He checked his phone again and tapped something, probably resetting his fancy traps, and gestured back to the rooms. "Sit, please. You must ache with Adam so big now."

I huffed, then scurried. Once we entered the living room and I eased into the ridiculously comfy sofa, I flapped my hands impatiently. "Let's hear it."

He stood directly in front of me, as if speaking to a boardroom. "Very well. Aardvark is simply code for the location of this house."

"And everyone we trust knows it?" I asked, stuffing a pillow behind my lumbar.

"Correct."

"Floral arrangements?"

"Code for weapons."

"And we're good for weapons, you said," I squinted at him, making sure.

"We simply cannot run out," he answered.

"Awesome. So then what's Mesopotamia? And _don't_," I jutted a finger at him, "tell me it's an antiquated region of Asia. Don't make me get up to punch you now that I'm all settled on this thing." I patted the cushion beside me.

At that, his eyes veered to one side. "Mesopotamia is also code."

"Thank Christ you're here to spell that out for me."

He grunted, leaning to the side so he could look out the door into the main space, probably checking the computer from sixty feet away. Then he checked his phone.

I tapped my watch. "Tick tock, buddy."

"You were gone for so long. I was suspicious of everything. I... took precautions."

I waited a second. Then, "Uh-huuuuuh..."

"Very well. After you were taken, several things happened..." And so he began to tell me what went down at the bar that night, mercifully glossing over his near-suicide, which I never wanted to hear about again, and instead gave me another reason to smooch Pam when he described her sacrifice to buy time from the meeting with Massawa.

But also, he said, he realized something incredibly valuable from her rock star act.

"She drank the silver herself, but her cover story was beautiful," he said. "A human donor, secretly a vampire hater, who had drunk silver and then offered their tainted blood. She would have been in just as much agony, had that actually happened."

He had been staring off into space as he spoke. Then, he suddenly stared right at me. "You care for so many who are mortal. Fragile. I knew in the coming battle, they would be obvious targets. The thought of you in pain as you mourned them... The thought of your tears, even as you held our son..." He stared off again. "It enraged me."

I waited without speaking.

Finally, he spoke again.

"Mesopotamia is my attempt to save your family and friends. Silver is one prong of their defense."

I squinted again. "Soooo... they're all wearing silver? That's sweet, but I don't think that'll help mu-,"

"No," he interrupted. "They're all _drinking_ silver. All of them."

I snorted. "What?"

He learned forward. "Every member of your family. Every citizen of your town who works at or patronizes Merlotte's. Even your ridiculous fucking ex-Eric kitty. They've been ingesting, some of them even bathing, in colloidal silver."

I didn't snort this time, instead letting my mouth hang open slightly. "What?"

"It's an advantage. A small one, mind you. The humans who drink silver can't be eaten, but they can still be killed. Pam also took the liberty of spraying every parked car with silver aerosol. Any human who escapes to their vehicle will be far safer than they would otherwise. It's not much, but it's better than nothing, should anyone you care about be attacked."

I struggled to sit up properly against the couch trying to suck me into its depths. "I don't understand. How... I mean... Why would they even agree to it or?... I mean... that must be over two hundred people, Eric! How did you explain...?"

"Most have no idea. I met with Herveaux and Merlotte. I explained the situation to a point. Herveaux agreed to spike your family's wells with several gallons that I supplied. Merlotte did the same to his beer taps and food stores. His customers never knew. I know it wasn't the entire Bon Temps population, but it was a fair percentage. Hadley was informed, as was Hunter. Jason..." He paused, looking almost guilty, "...was not."

Fuck the comfy couch.

I launched out of my seat and hugged him ferociously. "You were thinking about everyone I care about, even though you don't feel the same. Could you be more perfect?"

"I explained. My reasons are entirely selfish. And their odds are still terrible, should a vampire want them badly enough."

"No way, bubba. You're not taking this away from me. My husband's amazing and I can't imagine you doing anything better for me than protecting my people."

He shrugged with mock indifference. "I also bought your cousin a car. At least _she_ appreciates my gifts."

I laughed and squeezed harder. "See? Perfect."

He let me hold him a moment longer, then rose as if unencumbered and carefully reset me in the recliner. I settled my hands over my huge bump and cleared my throat in expectation. "The other prongs?"

He bowed his head in compliance. "I hired Lafayette Reynolds to ward as many properties as he could get to in the last week, including parking lots and even busy stretches of road. Even powerful vampires should find it difficult to breach them, and even if they do, they will be forced to move at a human's speed. Herveaux's pack has been hired to fan out at night and guard the town. Combined with Reynolds' wards, they should be able to repel an attack. Hunter had been scanning around his house every day and detected shifters. That was how I knew to watch for them. I found every last one sniffing around his house and dealt with them."

I'd been nodding vaguely the whole time, loving every word. "So, what did you tell Alcide to do? In the car just now?"

"The doctor, the shifter and wolf were glamored to forget certain things. The location of this house is known to Ludwig and Herveaux only if I prompt them with code words. I couldn't risk Massawa glamoring them himself. The doctor is coming here now, under twenty pounds of silver and followed by three pack members. Pam and Jessica will execute a series of maneuvers, losing any possible tails, before coming here. Now that the fight has begun, I've prompted Herveaux to take your family into hiding. If Chloe is still warding them, I've ordered Hunter to contact her telepathically and ask that she take them into Faerie, for the time being."

"And if she's not?"

"Then the wolf still has his orders."

"Where will he take them?"

"Away. Far away. With money and guards to spare."

I let out an exhausted sigh, shaking my head. "Did I say you were amazing?"

"I love you, but save your praise. It has not yet begun and we have no advantage that I see."

"We have the bond. We have guns. We have friends. We have anger and a fuck-ton of motivation."

He smiled faintly. "Indeed."

I smiled back and we shared that moment silently.

Finally, I asked, "So we just wait for the cavalry?"

His smile widened. "And for Adam. Yes."

His phone beeped. Louder and harsher than the beep proceeding it. He quickly pulled it from his pocket and read the screen. His face darkened with rage. I inhaled sharply as our bond spiked with his fear, an icicle stabbing deep into the base of my skull.

"What is it? What's happened?"

His fangs clicked and I heard the plastic of the phone case crack warningly in his hand.

"The doctor," he answered, the small light of hope dying in his gaze. "I tagged everyone's car with a spy device, recording their movements and whereabouts, tapping into the on-board readouts. Her device registered a problem, then stopped transmitting."

I swallowed, my question asked without permission. "What was the problem?"

He put his hand over mine on our baby. For the first time ever, his warm skin gave me no joy.

"Fire."


	58. Chapter 58

**A/N: Here we go again, me never updating as fast as I should. It's been three months! Though I promise you that it's because I went on a super-huge vacation for five months, then I got back home and had to find daycare for my baby while looking for a new job, and now I GOT that new job, which starts in a week, so God knows when I'll get to write now. Still. I have lots of hope. Some of it can be done from home! Anywho, for those who haven't given up on me, thanks so much for your continued messages of love and support. I even get reviews on occasion!**

**Also, _Pretty Kitty_ has been nominated for (count'em) 10 TB/SVM AWARDS, presented by the Kittyinaz Facebook Group. _Five, As Agreed Upon_ is up for two awards and _Throw Dirt In Your Sugar_ is up for one. Given that I've only ever written four stories, I'm three for four! Woo hoo! Thanks so much for the nominations, guys. And be sure to vote, no matter who for.**

**So here we go, the thrilling continuation... Eric's POV.**

Fucking Doctor. Fucking incompetent wolf guards supposedly protecting her. Fucking mystery fire. Fucking eagle shifter fucking flapping around my fucking property and reporting who-fucking-knows-what to that magisterial fuckwad.

Sookie was looking at our joined hands, her brow knitted with fear as her mouth formed a hard, determined line. She was already burying Ludwig, filing her away alongside our many dead acquaintances, readying herself to endure yet another horror all by herself: the birth of our child. I pressed our hands harder over him, forging my determination with hers.

"She may live," I soothed. "She's only human, but she's tough. And she has the weres to help her. Perhaps they were attacked, or perhaps the engine simply sparked up. We can't know for sure."

Sookie's mouth turned down sourly. "Please. Their engine just happened to overheat while coming to help us fight the Magister? She's dead. The weres are dead. If all of them were drinking silver and their cars were coated in the same stuff, then the vampires following them simply improvised and let the fire do all the work. They might all be tough, but humans and weres and every other fucking species respond to fire the same way." She lifted her hands, her fingers dancing upwards as she mimed little flames flitting into the sky.

"Possible. But unverified."

"Probable. And we need to assume that until she scuttles through the front door, you're my new midwife."

I nodded, but did not speak. Instead of voicing my fear, I punched the doctor's number on my phone. Pointless, perhaps, but it was stupid not to at least try to reach her. Several rings led to her voicemail. Of course. I tried the wolf guards posted to her. The ringer droned on and on.

"Fuck," I muttered in Swedish.

"Better find your forceps, doc," she answered right back.

Even now, her speaking to me in one of my native tongues surprised me. "Are you in labor?"

She huffed, "No."

"Then hush. We have time."

She mumbled something sarcastically, but I was already turning away, pulling up the app that showed me everyone's GPS coordinates. Pam was close and driving fast. Herveaux's truck (presumably with Hadley and Hunter in it) was making its speedy way towards the airport. After they parked in the long-term lot, I'd lose them. Just as I'd wanted. I had not queried the big wolf on exactly where he would take them when I gave him the signal to run. He didn't know, either. I'd glamored him to choose a random destination no closer than five thousand miles from Shreveport. Nowhere in the states, nowhere in Mexico, Canada, or the Gulf islands. He would not even know his own choice until he got to the airport with three other pack members, half a million in cash, and a private jet waiting for his command. Rome. Siberia. Korea. Swaziland. His brain would throw a dart at a map, and then they'd be gone. Forever, if he didn't hear from me via a blog dedicated to some idiotic cable show. Yet another piece of information I'd buried deep in his suppressed memory. He'd check it twice a week for the foreseeable future.

Jason's truck was parked in his driveway. I could only imagine he was in his house, eating that putrid bucket chicken and watching online porn.

Merlotte's van was behind his bar.

Ludwig's car and the escort vehicle were stationary and their tracking devices unresponsive about fifteen miles away. Under no circumstances would I leave Sookie, not even to investigate a crash that would take me two minutes to fly over.

"Pam and Jessica are almost here. They'll help," I offered.

"Great," she muttered.

Irritated at her attitude, I flashed right in front of her face. My sudden closeness startled her, as always. "Do not," I warned, "despair. I need Strong Sookie right now. I need my fire angel. I need my fearless, fucked-off fairy. Adam needs her. Do you hear me?"

She stared at me, blinking rapidly until the misery slowly cleared from her expression and she took a resolute breath. "You're right," she sighed. "I'm sorry. All hands on deck, right? I promise I won't bitch anymore."

"Bitch all you like. But kill the people pissing you off. Don't surrender before they even get here."

"Yes," she nodded, "yes, I hear you."

"Good," I held out my hand. "I'm afraid I can't let you rest like I'd hoped."

She waved me off and slowly pushed herself up from the sofa. "Like I could sit around on my ass with all of this going on. I'm ready to jump out of my skin."

I grabbed her by the waist and pulled her up to me, her belly pressed tightly between us. "Please don't. I love this skin." I traced a finger down her cheek.

She smiled and looked down at her purple pajamas. "I should change."

"Why? Are you worried your would-be killers will snigger at your jammy jams?"

She stuck her tongue out. "I'm a product of my raise, all right? Decent folks get dressed if they're expecting company."

"I see. What is the dress code for receiving assassins?"

"A simple house dress sprinkled with polka dots made of sunshine, smartass."

"Charming."

Her hands Lit up warningly against my chest and made me purr as they vibrated so tantalizingly close to my Radia. "The bigger sunny polka dots come later."

"Show me."

"I said later. And the ones I'm brewin' right now certainly ain't for you."

"Then show me the other kind now."

She smirked. Her hands intensified and I braced myself for a blast of pure joy. But then they dimmed and pushed me away. "Those are coming _much_ later."

My chest throbbed so badly from disappointment that my fangs clicked into place. My Radia knew my mistress so well, so why did it torture me when _she_ decided to be cruel? I did nothing but cherish that savage little sun, but my devotion went unnoticed and my heart was clenched in anger. Air puffed from my lungs as they edged away from their neighbor's punishment.

"It's painful," I whispered as I released her.

Sookie was working her hair into a tight ponytail, pulling the blonde strands away from her face. She looked up at me. "What is?"

"Being yours."

She cocked her head. "Why? Cuz I won't shoot you? I think you can manage without it for a few hours, you big baby."

I reached out and placed my fingertip on her lavender chest, just over her heart. "I wish I were Fae. I wish I could gift you with my own Light, if only so you could know this feeling. This... _ache_."

She paused in twisting her hair round and round. "Is it really that bad?"

Knowing what she meant, I nodded. No, it wasn't bad. But yes, it was that serious.

At once, she was more thoughtful, stepping into my space again. She put her head on my chest, her ear pressed directly into my heart. When she started speaking, I knew it wasn't to me.

"Let him be," she whispered. "You're part of me, now you're part of him. He's ours and he'll never betray us. So be kind, you little shit. Quit beating him up in there."

I was about to tell her it was useless. That I'd tried a hundred times to reason with that heart thief with no result. The Radia in my body was a dungeon master. A jealous demoness. A sun goddess, proud and vengeful. She threw tantrums and wild fits of desire. She was beautiful, if anyone could bear to look upon her terrifying splendour. She was mad. She was merciless. And she and I were melted together for all eternity.

I adored her.

I could never, ever, hope to tame her.

Sookie, with her sweetness and innocence, stood no chance at all.

She squeezed her eyes shut and buried her face harder into my shirt. "Obey me, Light."

And suddenly the floor turned to liquid beneath my feet. I staggered slightly, then stood straight, holding Sookie to me. Peace filled me, pouring in from my groin to my scalp. I groaned softly as my eyes slid shut. This was not pacification. This was not simply getting my fix.

Her Light expanded from its white-knuckled clutch on my heart into all of me, lapping as calmly as water. My head stayed clear. My goals were still in sharp focus. But my fears were gone. My uncertainties. There was only silence now. Sookie once compared my mind to a raging swarm of bees. I was now as quiet and as full of intent as a cathedral.

"Amazing," I rasped.

She looked up at me hopefully. "Good? Better than Light balls?"

"No. But much more useful. I feel centered now. Reinforced." I looked at her in awe. "How do you know? How do you _always_ know what to do? These abilities of yours..." I shook my head. "You _must_ be the most powerful creature in existence."

She snorted, patting my chest as she stepped back again. "Ha! Think I'd be hiding under a plantation home in Louisiana if I were?"

"You are twenty-six. A child. By the time you're two hundred, you'll be the only religion in the world."

"Shush your mouth!" she cried out in horror, her eyes turning upwards in apology. "Sorry, Jesus. He's only kidding."

I was about to tell Jesus where he could go, but Sookie held her finger up warningly. "And!" she chirped, "Being yours isn't all flowers and lollipops, either. My blood turns into liquid screaming when you're not close by. I can barely leave the room before my feet start dragging. So cry me a river."

I couldn't believe I was willing to continue arguing over who had it worse, given our situation, but she made me so fucking crazy, I nearly capitulated. I opened my fanged mouth to retort that vampire blood had nothing on a fairy Radia when it came to securing a mate, only to snap it shut as the outer electric garage door buzzed in alert. Someone had given the correct codes to descend into the tunnel. I checked my GPS again. Pam's car was pulling up.

I sauntered past her. "I still win."

"Like hell you do!"

Luckily, my woman was too heavy with my son to keep up with me. I strode into the main garage and awaited Pam's car to appear from the dark, cavernous entry.

"Hey!" Sookie's voice echoed as she huffed across the room. "Donchu lie your ass off, then run away!"

My back to her, I smiled. "Do something about it."

"Don't think I won't!"

I heard an engine rumbling in the tunnel. Pam's dark blue Mercedes emerged from its depths, the blonde and redhead women sitting in the front seats. Sookie was already breathless when she reached my side. I got a sharp elbow into the ribs.

"Jerk."

"Don't fight in front of guests. Gran would faint."

"You don't get to invoke Gran!"

"Sssshhhh," I soothed condescendingly as Pam killed the engine and they stepped out. Pam was in black. Flat shoes. She outfit clicked quietly as I detected the sound of silver chains and spikes alongside wooden stakes. She sounded as though she were made of watch parts. Jessica was still casual, though she was looking much better these days. She was clearly eating regularly again. She hair and skin had revived. She wore simple jeans and a fitted white tee. She smiled at us nervously.

I watched both of them pause as they saw Sookie's enormous belly. Their pupils went from normal to completely blown. The scent of her luscious, healthy blood reached them, and even though Adam's scent was still masked, their fangs dropped at the allure of his mother. She'd always smelled fantastic. Pregnancy, which smelled good on any woman, made her positively pulse with life. She saw their expressions and blushed, stepping discreetly closer to me.

She was shy at their wordless compliment. I was less coy at their insolence.

"Keep your dicks in your pants and tell me your status," I warned with no humor.

They immediately looked down, forcing their teeth into human dimensions again. I noticed it took some will.

"We were followed. We pulled over and had a nice chat with our stalkers about their regrettable line of work. I suggested other avenues. There was Power Point involved and-,"

"Pam," I interrupted.

Jessica looked at me sheepishly. "She killed them. Like, murdered the shit outta them."

"Vampire?"

Jessica nodded.

"How many?"

"Four."

I nodded back. "Then fine. Anything else?"

Pam smirked with pride at her body count. "Two cars on Highway 43 were on fire."

"Did you stop? Look for survivors?"

She arched a brow. "If anything, I sped up."

I sighed. Regrettable, but probably wise. The attackers might have been waiting for Pam, using the doctor as bait and hoping my second would come to her aid. Thankfully, my second was a self-serving bitch.

"Did you at least see anything?"

Pam didn't move, but Jessica shook her head hard. "Nothing. Not even bodies strapped into the seats. If anyone died in the cars, they were slumped over or in the trunk."

"Unlikely," I said. "I'm sure a doctor would always wear her seatbelt. I'm also sure that Massawa would want prisoners for questioning." I looked hard at Pam. "Did you come here directly after seeing the crash?"

At that, she shook her head once. "I pulled over fifteen miles later and watched the road. Jessica searched the woods for scouts. No one came after us. Before we left, we tore up the pavement for fifty feet, then covered the mess with two-inch nails."

"Nails?" asked Sookie incredulously.

Pam's pride doubled. "Never leave home without a bucket of nails, honey. Rocks and trees can be pushed off the road in seconds, but even vampires need time to sweep itty-bitty nails out of the way."

Sookie whistled. "And to think I already owe you a kiss."

Pam chuckled and slid her tongue over her lips.

I growled. "Dick. Pants."

Sookie folded both hands into the crook of my arm. "Maybe you wanna bring them up to speed? Tell them everything they don't already know?"

I stepped forward into Pam's face, staring her down sternly before turning away and giving a quick synopsis of everything I'd told Sookie minutes before. They listened intently.

Jessica looked frightened. "So it's just us? Nobody else can help? Against an army or an ancient Egyptian or anything?"

Sookie smiled gently at her. I felt momentarily bad about involving a fledgling in a fight that would surely claim her life. "There is no one else," I answered. "No vampires can be trusted. Massawa is too well placed. My hope to protect Sookie with an army provided by the Authority is pointless if the commander of that army wants her dead. Humans are only weaknesses at this point. Any who matter to Sookie have been removed from the situation for their protection. Weres are with the doctor and Herveaux. I assume those with Ludwig are dead. Last I checked, Herveaux was progressing as planned."

They digested this. I felt a ripple of fear from Sookie at the thought of Hadley and Hunter's capture. There was little I could do to reassure her. I'd done what I could to protect her cousin, but the girl's existence was known in the vampire community and her past made her very, very hard to forget. And Massawa forgot nothing. If he was interested in Hadley, then Herveaux would prove as deterring as a paper umbrella. Hunter would be discovered purely by accident. A windfall apple. He would be eaten on sight, rendered as tribute to Massawa, or simply sold. I had far more hope for his adult companions than I did the Fae child.

I would have swallowed my own tongue before saying as much to Sookie.

Jessica sensed the sorrow in the room. "I'm sure they're fine," she said aloud. No one commented.

"So what now? Do we knit booties?" asked Pam.

I rolled my eyes. "Save your little wooden needles for something more constructive and go patrol. I shot a spying shifter fifteen minutes ago. Go find more and bring them here. I want answers as to when Massawa plans to move on us."

They bowed their heads in deference to their maker, friend and king. Jessica looked up. "Won't he bring that army, though. Won't we see them coming a mile off?"

Sookie's fingers tensed in my arm slightly. "Eric?"

I shook my head, rubbing her fingers with my own. "You never see men like him. They come at you sideways. As much as I've prepared, I'll doubt I've thought of his plan of attack."

My mate leaned into my slightly and whispered into my side. "Eric?"

Pam clucked her tongue in irritation. "So where first? The woods? The house? That bowling lane you call a driveway?"

"House perimeter, then work your way out. No one gets through unless they're pinioned by you and ready for questioning." I reached into my back pocket and retrieved two phones. I threw them at each woman. Each caught hers with no effort. "Burners. Call me with anything suspicious. Or if you're killed. I'll need to restrategize."

Pam made an indelicate gesture and Jessica nodded seriously, as though she absolutely planned to call and alert me if she was staked into a gooey puddle in the dirt.

They zipped back up into the dark tunnel. I lost sight of them in seconds.

There was a gentle tug at my sleeve.

I looked down at Sookie. She looked back with eyes so wide with fear that each and every bone in my body turned to ice. But not because of her eyes.

Her skin. Her beautiful skin that I told her not to jump out of, was glowing a pure, shimmering gold. She was Midas' daughter in all of her horrifying glory. "Eric?"

"What, Sookie? What is it?"

She wet her lips, then bit them inwards. "I feel them. _ Everywhere_. They're coming."

"What's happening to you? Who is coming?" I swooped down with both arms and locked her in. She was not leaving me. Not even if she shimmered away into nothingness. I was going with her.

"The fairies," a tremulous, terrified squeak. "I can sense them. _Lots_ of them."

She took my hand and placed it on her beautiful stomach, nestled snugly between us. "And him. He's coming, too. Right now."


	59. Chapter 59

**A/N: Just a quick note here, as I don't want to rehash this anymore and anyone who wants the full details can see them on my WordPress site. I just want to explain the simple idea that while we're all paying homage to TV, books and movies that we love on this site and copyright belongs to those creators, THESE STORIES BELONG TO US. More specifically, this story belongs to me. I've found three plagiarists thus far, the last one was publishing my stuff in her online book series sold on Amazon and B&N. Don't steal. I found them and I can find others. It doesn't matter if it's a different fandom, or a published work. Google is a plagiarist's worst enemy, and if I can find a Vampire Diaries, One Direction and an original story's transgressions, I can find anything. So can every other author. Obviously most readers are awesome and kind and stealing wouldn't even occur to them. But to those few who think that the original writer will never know, that the internet is too big and no one really cares anyway because it's fanfiction and free to read, think a-fuckin-gain. It's free to read, not free to pass off as your own. Everyone is welcome here, but stealing is a piss-poor way to repay an author you enjoy. Not to mention illegal. **

**But I won't dwell on it. The vast majority of you deserve a story, not a lecture. **

**So, hey people! So the new job is awesome, even if it IS 8am-5pm and I spend all time before and after feeding/cleaning/dressing my urchins. But no one wants to hear about that. Point is, writing time is reeeee-donkyoulously rare. Stupid work/chores. But you've heard this all before. Yada yada yada ficlit sucks. Anyway, Pretty Kitty won two very pretty medals from the You Want Blood awards. First for best lemons (HA!) and third for best True Blood rewrite. Seriously, at this point, ALL rewrites are better than True Blood. Hobo chimps write for that show and I'll throat punch anyone who says different. And speaking of people having their asses handed to them... SPOV. **

_What's happening? Oh dear God save me, what is HAPPENING?_

The calm that I had so gently poured into Eric had evaporated. He glared down at me, his features so hard with fear that they looked like they might crack.

"He's coming," I repeated in horror. "And more." I could feel the magical press of Fae as the divide between our worlds started to thin out. My experience came from Claudine, and her many visits to me over the last year. I would feel the soft burrowing of another brain coming through a wormhole, a telepathic brain like mine.

My belly clenched. Not with fear. It knocked me breathless with pain.

The burrowing heading for us now was not soft. Nor was it single. There were so many aggressive tunnels heading towards us that I knew we were fucked. Every direction was blocked. The air shimmered with malice.

"They waited," I concluded, not even sure how I knew. "They waited until our vampires were gone and the doctor was taken out."

I grabbed onto Eric's arms and grit my teeth as the pain rippled in my womb. My nails broke his skin.

"Where?" His fangs snapped down. He looked around in all directions. "I smell them. I can't see them. Where the fuck are they, Sookie?"

"Here. Everywhere."

"Is there time to hide you? To run?"

"No."

"Fine." He zipped away and back again, too fast to see, now decorated with handguns. "You've gone into labor, yes?"

I nodded, thick tears filling my eyes. I hated how afraid I'd become in a matter of seconds. I could not be Eric's fearless fire angel with Adam knocking on the door. My chest was tight with pained breathing. I could already feel him positioning. Fine tuning for launch. This kid did nothing slow. I put my hands over him. I knew this wasn't going to take long, and yet, he'd picked the worst possible time.

I took a shaky breath as Eric pressed me behind him and quickly began to back his way from the middle of the room to the computers on the far side. "Fire up," he whispered. "Kill anyone who isn't me."

I nodded again. "Call Pam back. Now."

He didn't answer, but I felt his brain pulse with her beacon. He just pressed me up between the cold cement wall and his warm back. My hands Lit up with a vengeance, illuminating the shade behind his tall frame. He whispered again. "The energy you used against the sycamore, call it. The power you have to Still me and throw things across a room, use it. Whatever you thought about when Sophie Anne bit you, whatever kept you whole and made me Light up and destroy her, think it now."

I shook my head. "Your Radia won't kill fairies. And they're not here for blood."

"They're here to hurt us. To kill our child. You are my Goddess, Sookie. The strongest creature ever made. I will kill for you, and for him, but I may fail. If I do, Smite these fucks and save my family."

He held two handguns in either hand. I could smell the heavy, acrid scent of iron and the top notes of lemon. The ammo was laced with both. If not so encumbered, I know he would have reached back for my hand. I put a Lit palm square between his shoulders. "Don't fai-," I gasped as pain stopped me.

And then, to my horror, a huge spot of Light broke through the room.

The interdimensional doorway popped loudly at the far end. Light exploded around it like a flare. Then five to the right. Eleven to the left. No, thirteen. Five in the middle. I squeezed my eyes shut against the blinding white.

Above my head, Eric hissed wildly.

In the wake of each Light, there was a fairy.

In the arms of every fairy, a vampire hissed in return.

A final pop in the center of the room. A strange fairy woman stood in the wake of the Light. With her own passenger held tightly in her arms, her eyes slitted in pure hatred as she spied me behind my protector. But it was the man that stepped from her lavender embrace that made me moan softly in fear.

Massawa looked calmly around the room as he took in the sixty-odd vampire and fairy posse, before looking back at Eric and I pressed in shock against the wall. Eric aimed one of the guns straight at him. I knew this one had wooden bullets, not iron.

I searched all of their faces, praying to see salvation among them. But Mab wasn't there. Neither was Claudine. My mind blanked with panic.

Massawa looked almost apologetic. He addressed the growling crowd without looking away from us.

"The Viking belongs to the vampires," he told them. "Do not kill him. Do not _think_ of killing him. Do not take him away from the girl. Subdue him any way you can. Now."

Eric was in front of me. Then the room blurred as thirty fanged monsters exploded towards us. The air in front of me swirled. And Eric was gone.

"ERIC!" I screamed after him, but I couldn't even see him in the vortex of super speed. Gunshots rang out and he roared in fury, and suddenly three huge bursts of blood rained down as his targets met their True Death.

Massawa had not moved. The fairies gathered behind him, their menacing snarls aimed at me. I clutched my belly and gnashed my teeth as pain tore through me again.

"Kill her," the dark monster whispered. "The Coming is nigh. Kill her now and save both our peoples."

I put out both hands and shot directly into their circle. "Fuck you!" I screamed. "Stay away from me!" The energy balls flew fast and true. Massawa dodged them easily, but the fairies scattered at a much slower speed. One was too slow. My Light drove into his stomach and he screamed as it tore him open. Falling to his knees, his flesh dried rapidly around the wound, spreading quickly. His eyes retreated into his sockets, his lusty yell turned to a scratchy gust of wind. Within seconds, he was a husk. And then he was nothing but grey soot settling softly on the floor.

Nothing prepared me for such an instant, violent death from my own hands. The other fairies gasped in fear. I shrieked in triumph. I shot four more without even thinking. My would-be killers moved with more motivation this time to avoid them.

Pam and Jessica zipped into the entrance. They stared in shock at the scene before them before Pam and I hissed in the shared pain of Eric receiving an injury.

"Kill them!" I screamed at the only two friends in the room. "They want Adam! Help Eric!"

With that, they joined the barely-visible fray. Watching the swirl, I gave a strangled cry of rage. Why wasn't our Radia protecting us? So what if these assholes weren't trying to separate us or feed on me? They were going to rip Adam out of me! I would die! Adam would die! Surely the rules weren't that fucking literal!

But nothing happened. My silent commands for the Radia in my love's chest went unanswered. Eric continued to battle, an amazing warrior but badly outnumbered. He roared again as our bond tried to pull me to him, but his brain pushed me firmly away from danger.

I had no time to watch.

Massawa hung back. He didn't engage with Eric, which I was grateful for. He seemed for too interested in me to care what happened to the Viking. But he didn't come for me directly, either. No doubt my Light scared the nocturnal shit out of him, and rightly so. I aimed and shot another volley at him as I tried to take cover behind the computer server. He disappeared and reappeared in its path effortlessly.

The fairies charged again, this time half-running, half-popping until the distance between us became nothing.

I shot again. "Don't you fuckin' touch me!" I screamed at them. I killed two more. They mummified and exploded like their dusty buddy. The lavender chick made it to me first. She punched me square in the face. I heard my nose crack. As my head snapped to one side, she took the upper hand and grabbed me by the wrist.

"Mongrel," she hissed low and hatefully. "Everything you are is malignant. A hybrid, a vampire Chosen, a cancer in your belly. Poisonous little freak!"

With my other hand, I laid a single finger against her cheek as she leaned in to spew her hatred.

I may as well have shot her with a canon.

Her head snapped back and she flew backwards, clear across the room. I heard her skull smack into the cement wall and she fell, falling ten feet into a bloody heap.

My nose reset with ease. I spat blood from a cut in my mouth that was already gone. My wrist registered no pain at all.

The others backed off, looking nervously as Massawa as he in turn looked at her unconscious body. Yanking my tiny blade from my beautiful necklace, I lunged forward and gouged it deep into one of their throats. It wasn't enough to kill them, but it was certainly enough to make four of the enemy vampires stop in midair. Their faces froze with hunger. They sniffed, I could hear the incredulous drag of air into their lungs. And that was all they needed. As one, they flew at the bewildered girl as she pressed her hands into the seeping wound.

"No!" she screamed as they zipped around her like a pack of dogs and descended. They had her by the arms and legs, sinking their fangs into any flesh they could reach. I laughed again, flipping Massawa the finger and I grabbed my belly and bore through another round of agony.

Jessica screamed in the swarm.

I wanted to shoot and kill her attacker, but I couldn't see any of them clearly. I couldn't risk killing one of my three.

Instead, I rounded on the hesitating fairies who were obviously starting to reconsider their alliance with a bunch of fairy eaters and shot another two rounds at them. "You stupid bastards," I swore at them, grinning as another one bit the dust.

"You made this bed, now you goddamn lie in it." I lunged again with my tiny blade. They evaded my slow waddle with ease, eyes huge with fear at the prospect of a single prick.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Massawa make the very human gesture of a sigh coupled with an eye roll.

Even in the distance, I could see him making a decision. Then I blinked, and my hands were crushed above my head, my belly sandwiched painfully between concrete and an expensive suit. His angular, beautiful face was an inch from my own. He gathered my hands in one of his.

"_I was so afraid_," he whispered in a dead, African language that I understood perfectly, "_So afraid... that Claudine would hide you forever. Keep you in her secret place until the Scion was born_."

He reached between us and clamped his ebony hand over my purple stomach. I cried out in pain as his fingers dug into my swollen flesh.

"_But it's not too late_," he said, his black eyes wide with pure hope. He nodded to me, as though I would agree. "_All is not lost. The world... this shitty, stupid, blood-soaked world... will live. The Scion cannot take it from us, Miss Stackhouse. You may not survive this. No, you surely will not. But you must understand, we choose life. This stupid world is our world. I can't let it die. No scale would tip for two instead of billions. Forgive me_."

His fingers drove into my belly. Across the room Eric bellowed in rage as his foes managed to keep him from helping me. It didn't matter. My life was over. I was losing my baby. My own life was meaningless if he was torn from my womb while his father watched. I wailed silently at the unfairness of it all. Fate and fairytales and true love conquering all were supposed to be on our side. Instead, I was going to die of blood loss as this monster stole my baby and brandished him like a trophy to this hoard.

My hands were buckling under the pain. Massawa lowered his eyes to my stomach as he concentrated on his impromptu abortion.

I jutted my chin, bringing my lips to his ear. "No."

The pain eased from my stomach, like his fingers were softening their assault. "_No,_" I repeated in his stupid mother tongue.

He looked at me in surprise, backing away a bit to take me in. "No," I assured him.

His fingers lifted away. "No!"

His grip loosened. "_No_!"

"Sookie!" Eric screamed.

"_NOOOOOOOOOOO_!"

Light engulfed the room. I barely noticed. I stared at the glorified butcher in front of me and screamed again. "_NOOOOOOOOOO_!"

Suddenly our underground bunker disappeared. A sparkly, cookie-scented forest took its place. A small gathering of Fae inhabitants looked up in shock as a miniature war invaded their peaceful gazebo. Mab was sitting at a stone table with several others, including Claudine. Her mouth fell open in a gasp at the sight of us. _All of us._ Massawa wrapped around me. The frenzy of vampires who'd gone stone still at their sudden transportation. Five had Eric pinned while he struggled against them. Pam and Jessica had been wrestling a pair of twins, all of whom stared in wonder at their magical, sunlit surroundings. The group of fairies who'd set on me, even the lavender bloody heap had made the leap.

I looked calmly at Mab. "Kill them, please. Kill them all."

Mab rose from her seat and thrust her hands into the air. "They threaten the Scion! Destroy them!"

Suddenly the posse of sixty, made forty by us, was now surrounded and attacked as hundreds of fairies obeyed their queen and leapt to our defense.

The traitor fairies immediately lost their bravado under the murderous gaze of Mab. They cowered, throwing Light and popping to and fro, but reacting purely out of fear. The vampires destabilized entirely. The smell of the land, the warmth of the sun, the blood that boiled in the enemies' blood... they lost their minds. Turning deftly on their heels, they abandoned Eric, Jess and Pam, and dove at the fairies around them. Mab's fairies. Massawa's fairies. They didn't care. Bloodlust overrode their loyalties.

Eric wasted no time and zipped to me, throwing an amazed Massawa into the pack. His expression was pained as he tried valiantly to keep his attention on me and not the drugging affect of Faery. He was losing. One female fairy ventured too close, too distracted by her attack on two vampires, and he snatched her. He snarled at us before he tore into her throat, sucking wildly as bliss overtook him.

Eric scooped me up. I groaned in pain. "Come on," he whispered.

He carried me fifty feet to Mab's white stone table and gently laid me on top of it. He looked back at the battlefield of super speed and Light balls exploding, before looking back at me. With shaking, determined hands, he pulled my pajama bottoms down my legs and whipped them off my feet. Bare from the waist down, I mewled in fright and disapproval. He shook his head. "We have a little time. There's no other way. You need to push, Sookie. Please," he looked at me with a rare expression of absolute terror. "Please. Push."

"I... I don't know if it's time to push," I stuttered miserably. "I need Ludwig."

"You have me," he answered, setting my feet at the edge and parting my knees. "We don't have time to wait and wonder if we're doing this correctly. Adam must come now. Push. Give me the beautiful son you've made me."

Tears dripped down my cheeks. "I'm scared. It hurts."

"Me too. But you have to. Massawa will fight his pleasure and kill you. Push!"

I gritted my teeth and shrieked as I bore down. Pain like I'd never known ripped me in half. I screamed. Eric roared with me as blood gushed between my thighs.

"Yes!" he answered my scream. "That's it! Push, lover! Show me my child, Sookie! You can do this!"

I panted several times, the bore down again.

And again.

And again.

Sweat broke out all over my body. My muscles strained to the point of tearing. Minutes passed that felt like hours. I vaguely wondered how the hell human women did this for days when I was ready to throw in the towel right the hell now.

Eric's eyes darted between my legs and the fight. No one seemed to notice us. My screams blended with everyone else's.

I felt the crown of his tiny head pass in a blinding moment of agony. Eric's eyes rounded in wonder as he stared between my legs.

"He's coming," he whispered. "Oh, Sookie. Beautiful Sookie. Keep going. He's so close." He took each of my hands in his and repositioned my feet on his chest, giving me leverage.

"Once more," he encouraged over my moans. "Just one more."

Taking a deep breath, I pushed all of my flagging energy into one last final push. Pain made my sight go black. His little head peaked, then passed through. Glorious relief flooded my body as the biggest part of his body left me. Eric reached out to cup him. As gentle as any midwife I could have hoped for, he guided the tiny body out the rest of the way.

I collapsed backward, my head hitting the hard surface. I didn't care.

Trembling with exhaustion, I looked up at my Chosen. He held a bloody little doll in his arms. The doll spasmed softly, his miniature hands opening and closing. A lusty little cry broke from his lungs.

Eric tipped his head backward, his eyes closed. He opened his mouth to the sky and bellowed with joy. Adam yelled louder, startled by the sound.

"My son," he said brokenly. He picked up my purple pants and laid them out flat next to me before carefully setting the doll on top and wrapping him up in the legs. Once swaddled, Eric sat on the table and pulled me into the V of his legs, holding us both against him. I fell into him.

"Our son," he said again, placing him in my arms. "Fuck, you make perfect children, lover."

My shuttered eyes gazed at the cherubic face peeking out of the purple wrap, so soft and sweet that my heart broke. His dark blue eyes gazed back at me, the shock of blonde hair still wet and matted on his head.

"Adam," I whispered, kissing his forehead. "Hello, baby."

His little face pinched quizzically. My tear fell on his forehead. Gently, my mind reached out for his. _Hello_, I said again. _You made a grand entrance, little man_.

His mouth puckered in response.

I clutched him tighter, huddling half-naked in Eric's arms. The battle had quieted. Most dead, I imagined. I peeked around my champion, expecting to find this lovely place splattered with blood, the remaining vampires hunched over their glittery lunch like zombies as the remaining fairies shot them in their oblivious heads.

But the scene before me was not one of total death, like I'd half-hoped. Most of both groups still lived. They all stood, mingled together, their Lit hands and dropped fangs forgotten as all of them stared in wonder at the three of us. Blood soaked their clothing and ran down their faces. Their soft awe reminded me of the time all of Bon Temps came out to the park to watch a solar eclipse. Even Pam stood among them, her hand pressed against her lips.

I nudged Eric with my cheek. "They're all staring at us, Eric. They're staring at Adam."

Eric didn't look away from his son's face. He didn't seem to hear me. "Our son," he said again, amazed by the words. "My son. Look how fine he is. How beautiful."

"Eric," I rasped, swallowing around my tired fear. "I'm glad he's here, too, and I really hope he's as invincible as Claudine says, but right now, all I see is a helpless baby in front of a killing mob."

That brought him back. His head swivelled, boring holes into everyone looking back at us. "Is this not what you'd hoped?" he roared at them. "My son is born, and the world is still here, you zealot bastards! He's a child, not a _monster_!" He spat the last word in hatred.

Most jumped at his bark. Others didn't respond at all, the only kept their eyes nailed to the tiny bundle in my arms. I moved to stand. Eric grunted and held me back. I pushed at his hands and slowly got to my feet. Mercifully, my pyjama top fell to my upper thigh. I was a bloody mess, but at least I could walk without everyone seeing my lady business. Even now, the pain was receding, my newly-found super healing making quick work of Adam's wake.

With my feet on the grass, I wobbled slightly. Eric caught my arm, helping me cradle our baby.

I looked into the crowd and found Mab. Her face was actually quite beautiful when she looked so hopeful. I gave her a meaningful nod. "Thank you," I said. "For believing in us."

She simply nodded back, much shakier than mine.

I spotted Claudine. I gave her a teary smile. "I should have listened to you. I'm sorry."

She pressed her hands to her eyes, wiping away her own. "It doesn't matter, cousin. He's here now. Maybe," she paused, contrite and uncertain, "maybe one day you'll let me hold him."

Eric vibrated with a growl. I patted his hand, and just kept smiling. Some day in the near future, but sure as fuck not today, we might let someone touch our son after all of these people just tried to murder him.

I searched the crowd again, not seeing him immediately because he was on his knees. His was a mixture of misery and relief. I looked down into his face and spoke. "You Jim Jones wannabe fuck. What do you have to say now? Huh? WHAT?"

"I've failed," he whispered, only audible because of the complete silence. "He cannot die. Instead he will grow. He will consume. And then he will rule us all. Kill us all. We are doomed."

I felt Eric tense, a signal that he was going to bolt to this idiot and end him before he could regain his senses. Though our joined hands, I Stilled him. No one else was dying today. There was no point.

I simply snorted in disgust. "Go back to your books, Custos. It's where you belong. Write about the world, but stay the fuck out of it."

The lavender swaddle undulated as Adam moved slightly. I caught his gaze again and smiled helplessly at the person I loved just as much as Eric. His thin arm escaped the cloth and reached out to me. Without thinking, I gave him my finger. He grabbed it and I gasped.

Awareness pulsed through my skin. Eric gasped as well, his hand still cupping my elbow. The current of Adam filled us both.

_Hello. _

I stuttered and stared at him. He blinked back, the universal language of a mute newborn registering in my unlimited knowledge of words. _Are you ready?_

"Ready for what?" I asked in a dry squeak.

Eric's grip tightened. "He's speaking to you?" he asked in my ear.

_It's time_, my Scion answered, cooing out loud.

"Time?"

_The Coming. The time has Come._

"I don't understand, baby."

His miniature fingers pulled impatiently on my knuckle. Deep, cold fear rose up in me, the same fear I'd felt when Mab had pronounced him a danger to all living things.

I didn't want to ask. My mouth ruled against me. "What's coming, honey?"

The words left me, and the perpetual sunlight of Faery dimmed, as if clouds were running over the sky. Then it darkened to night within seconds.

"Honey? Baby, what's coming?"

Eric had both of us locked tightly against him. "What?" he asked again. "Sookie, what is happening?"

The vampires and fairies murmured in fear as the world around us fell into black. And then... suddenly... it was just gone.

We were back somewhere in our world. The night sky was still above us, but an ordinary forest surrounded us. Crickets chirped and alligators rumbled. I could smell moss and wet earth. Good old Louisiana. She never seemed far away, no matter where you went.

The fairies went rigid at their exposure. They instantly formed a tight pack against the rest of us, their backs pressed together as they surveyed an enemy landscape.

"I can't feel it!" one of them shrieked. "Where is it?"

"I can't move," another one echoed dully. He looked down at his body in detached horror. "I can't teleport. Not anywhere."

"It's not there!" The lavender heap staggered to her feet, touching her bleeding head gingerly as she pointed at me and screamed. "You see?! He is Death! Our world is gone! I cannot feel it anymore! The doors have closed!"

Several began wailing while others tried to teleport in vain. The vampires backed away, not in unison, but prepared for flight nonetheless. This was not their problem, and the loss of Faery had brought back some of their brains. A quick exit was looking like a smart option.

I glared at the woman. "Death's comin' for somebody, that's for damn sure. Shut the fuck up or I'll kill you myself."

She twisted her mouth, no doubt for another volley of hateful trash, but she was cut short. The fairies, still in varying stages of panic at the sudden loss of their land, all cried out together as their spines propelled them forward, their chests Lighting up from within. Their Radias shimmered under their skins. Eric and I gasped at the sight. Each fairy watched in terror as their Lights moved slowly from their hearts, through their shoulders, down their biceps and into their wrists. The Lights settled briefly in their palms, then exploded outward in a simultaneous release of Light.

The vampires howled and braced for an attack.

The Lights completely ignored them. Like missiles, each ball of energy tore off into the night in every direction, some hurtling wildly to and fro, some straight into the horizon, disappearing in a blink.

Only one Light stayed.

A fairy girl, just on the brink of looking like a woman, watched with saucer eyes as her greenish Light lingered while all others departed. It hesitated for a moment, then launched straight into the pack of vampires. They scattered. But the Light only wanted one.

Despite his retreat, a young, sandy-haired vampire male took the hit square in the back. He screamed as the blast absorbed into his clothes and knocked him into the dirt. The fairy girl looked lost as she watched her torpedo take down a man she'd never set eyes on before tonight.

I squeezed my eyes, not wanting to see his end. Strangely, Eric snorted in amusement.

"Why are you laughing?" I hissed, burying my eyes into his shirt. No more were supposed to die tonight. All of this was supposed to end with the birth, dammit.

But Eric only guided my face out of his chest and pointed it towards the poor, young-looking vampire.

"I'd know that Light anywhere," he chuckled, kissing my hair. "That man is well and truly fucked now."

How could he laugh now, when the Coming might mean more dead bodies? I nearly yelled at him, but my eyes were on the "poor" vampire now, and as he pulled himself off the ground and pivoted on his heel to glare at his attacker, his expression was anything but angry.

Eric barked with mirth as the two stared incredulously at each other... and then they attacked. The girl was much slower, especially without her popping, but the man closed the space in no time. And then they were on each other. Clawing. Biting. Kissing.

_Kissing?_

The girl cupped his square face in her palms and devoured his mouth. He turned his head, planting reverent kisses into her hand before continuing trying to swallow her face.

"Orla!" Mab shouted the girl's name. Orla ignored her. The vampire fisted her fine black hair, pulling her back to watch as he put his wrist to his mouth and ripped it open. She leapt on it, grabbing his arm with two hands and latching her pouty mouth to the wound, drinking deeply.

"ORLA!" It was like her queen wasn't even there.

I watched as the blood and kissing turn into something far more embarrassing, then looked back at my baby as their moans filled the ears of dozens of witnesses.

I knew that newborn babies couldn't smile, and yet Adam had the Zen-like quirk of Buddha. "Honey," I repeated to him, "What's happening?"

He didn't answer.

In fact, the answer didn't come all at once.

It took several days for us to work out what had happened immediately, and to this day we're not really sure what it meant for the world at large. But what we did know, as each fairy began to feel a pull in the direction their Radia deserted them, and as the sun slowly rose over that meadow, banishing all but two vampires to the ground, was that Orla and Dan (his name turned out to be) were still going at it like animals in the grass.

And Dan saw the sun for the first time in 53 years.


	60. Chapter 60

**A/N: Hi Everyone. Well, this is it. This is the final chapter of Pretty Kitty. I can't believe it. Even now, as I write this final A/N, I don't want to post it, because that means I'll never post on it again. I'd like to thank everyone who's read, commented, lurked and rehashed with me along the way. I sometimes reread my reviews and see the names of nice people that I haven't spoken to in years. And new ones who Favorite and Follow this story, even now. I'd love to hear from you, old and new, just one last time before I sign off. You've all been amazing. You have no idea. And now, the finale. **

**EPOV**

_Of Bonde unique cometh the Scion. Prophesied of Fae, Augury of the invisible world._  
_The Omen of Amalgamation, the twist, the deed of Equalibrium_  
_Of beating hearts twain, come one. From the once, come thrice._

In the days that followed Adam's birth, I had some time to consider the prophesy that foretold of his Coming.

It took much convincing, but I finally got Sookie to sleep. She fought me tooth and nail after the battle, whisper-screaming over our son's sleeping head that we weren't out of the woods by any means. That just because some dusty old book said that Adam was bullet proof sure as hell didn't mean that we were going to test that theory by falling asleep and letting some residual psychos try to kill him again.

It took Pam and Alcide standing guard at our house before she finally succumbed to exhaustion. As she slept like the dead on our new bed, in the beautiful house I'd built for my beautiful family, I folded into my favorite chair at her side, holding my firstborn in my arms and reciting the tome's words in my head.

Adam could not hear it. His ability to speak with Sookie with his infant thoughts did not extend to me.

No matter. We were happy enough to stare.

Shortly after the battle, Massawa released Ludwig. As I'd assumed, she'd been captured and questioned before his attack on my house. He glamored her, though there was nothing to find. I'd been very careful to hide everything she knew. Her werewolf guards had been killed in front of her, in hopes of loosening her tongue. Rumor as it that she glanced at their ripped, naked bodies bleeding in the dirt before replying, "I'm a cat person anyhow."

Massawa let her go unharmed. There was no point in keeping her.

When she returned to us in a black, tinted sedan with AUTHORITY license plates, Sookie hugged her hard enough to break bones. The doctor brushed her aside, nearly running to the bassinet behind her. In awe, she gently laid the boy on the bed and examined him. Ten fingers. Ten toes. Good lungs. Responsive eyes. Alert ears. Normal heart rate. Over sixty percentile in birth weight and height. No reaction to sunlight, lemon or iron. She turned to us, her expression hollowed from shock.

"He's a baby," she informed us unnecessarily. "A healthy, normal baby."

Sookie had turned into me and shuddered, her biggest, secret fear leaving violently through her skin. I draped a loose arm around her while gazing at Ludwig. "And you are his doctor."

She didn't seem to see me, but she dug into her bag and handed me a pamphlet as she shuffled towards the door. It was a schedule for childhood vaccinations.

And that was that.

And so the Scion, prophesied of the Fae, began his new life with us. The augury of the invisible world, he had destroyed the Fae realm with a tiny jerk on Sookie's finger. Their land magicked out of existence. As much as this horrified the fairies initially, what they didn't know at the time was that the deed of equalibrium also came into effect. Their Radia, exploding from their bodies as they wailed in terror, saw to that.

Orla and Dan had merely been the first beneficiaries.

And it wasn't just the fairies in the field that night.

All over the world, every fairy that suddenly found themselves yanked from their plane and dumped into the graceless human world lost their Radia immediately. The shiny little suns tore across towns. Across countries. Oceans and ice and sand. Until they located their vampire target. Of the thirty million vampires currently living in the world today, ten thousand were going about their business when a giant ball of terrifying sunshine ran them down like dogs and plowed straight into their chests. Men. Women. Of all ages and backgrounds. They were Chosen without a single clue as to what had just happened. All they knew was that it was agony, an agony only eased by retracing the orb's trajectory to its fairy master.

The world never saw such a supernatural migration as these vampires and fairies moving across the world to find each other. They blew the caribou of Canada and the tuna in the south Atlantic out of the water. Once united, the couple simply stared at each other, taking in the features of a total stranger, before they followed my, Sookie's, Orla's and Dan's lead.

Namely, a free-for-all of blood sharing, fucking and total immersion in another soul.

That tricky fucking tome: _It had predicted the salvation of the fairy race._

Granted, it was slightly unorthodox, and thank fuck it didn't specify _how_ it would happen, because I guarantee that zero fairies would have agreed to a vampire lover, no matter how many skins it saved. (It turned out that only forty Fae were already bonded, twenty pairs total. To Choose a mate in their land was a ritual seldom entered into. Eternity was a long time to spend with someone.)

But fate, as always, knew better than to take a poll.

Instead, it simply Chose for each fairy the most perfect mate it could find among the living vampire population.

The fairies became inedible to any other vampire in the world, just as Sookie had proven with Sophie Anne. Their bond, and their mate, protected them from these attacks. Their vampires, in turn, were cursed/blessed with a single blood source, the purest and most delicious they'd ever known. The first bite made them forget all about humans, or hunting, or sliding greasy twenties to donors in an alley. They fell in love. They couldn't and wouldn't taste another. Their new Radias allowed them to day walk and protect their fairy with their lives, threatening any other vampire with a sunny death at night, should they try to interfere.

The declining Fae race was safe at last.

I never questioned whether these new mates were compatible, or simply compelled by Fae magic towards their intended, much as I never questioned it with Sookie and I. It didn't really matter. We were one. I seriously doubted that any of the new fairy-vampire couples were as perfect for each other as we were.

I looked down again at Adam.

He'd grown tired of staring at me and had gone to sleep. He slept a lot. Saving his mother's kin had sapped him, clearly. I looked out of the enormous bay window of our new plantation's master bedroom. The blue of the sky still awed me. Television, my only exposure to it for a thousand years, had done it no justice.

We'd retired here shortly after the whole mess ended.

Needless to say, the mass Choosing startled the shit out of the entire earthly community. Now that the fairies were an established fact -unable to hide in another world and away from prying eyes- every other group dealt with this mythological marvel in their own way.

Humans panicked, as usual. But settled quickly into suspicion, hatred, adulation and religious fervor at the appearance of so many angelic creatures that either Jesus or Satan had sent with a correlating mission of good or evil. The only ones that reacted with a modicum of grace were the witches, but even they ruined it slightly by spouting their usual crystal-consulting, age of Aquarius, Goddess loves everyone claptrap.

Weres and other two-natureds gave a fraction of a fuck that humans did. They were already aware of other races, and the two species had little in common with fairies, with no historical beefs to address. They mostly ignored each other. (Save Herveaux practically licking Hadley daily until they were well into their eighties.)

In fact, after the initial amazement, very little changed.

But of course, the prophesy wasn't done fucking with everyone.

The world had only just come to grips with its new, interdimensional arrivals before it was rocked yet again.

_Orla._

Sweet, fragile, raven-haired Orla with her handsome vampire who'd been turned the same evening that John F. Kennedy took office, had another little surprise thrown at them.

She became pregnant.

She gave birth to a lovely, equally raven-haired daughter after just two weeks gestation. They named her Io, after a nymph who was seduced by Zeus. Orla, who loved Dan very much, still had a teensy bone to pick with the universal forces that propelled them together. Like we and Io's namesake learned, you just can't fight God when he wants something.

We did not have long to astonish over that before another fairy woman was with vampire child. And another. And another. Until the shock of Adam's birth was buried under a cute, squawking pile of hybrid babies.

Interestingly, the Fae men who'd Chosen vampire women, as well as homosexual mates, did not produce children. Research was done, and it was assumed that the nonfunctioning wombs of undead women were unable to carry babies, however briefly, to term. But the Fae men were protected for life, and that was more security than they'd ever had before.

By this time, I had abdicated the twin throne of Louisissippi, as Hunter had dubbed it. Now that the need for an army to protect Sookie was no longer necessary, I developed a severe case of the fuck-its. I kept my businesses and my portfolio. I kept us very comfortable. My letter of resignation came in the form of an upper cut to Massawa's chin. the man was still broken by the whole affair, convinced The End was as far away as Adam's adulthood. I spat on his suit as I walked out.

"Put that in your books, scribe," I suggested as I slammed the door to his office.

From the crook of my elbow, Adam snuffled in his sleep. Gently, I dragged a finger down his chubby cheek, amazed that human skin could be so soft. He turned into my finger, thinking that I was dinner. But still asleep, he detected no mother's milk in my rough callouses, and relaxed.

I looked up and found Sookie's sleepy eyes on me. I smiled gently at her. "Welcome back, lover."

"How long I been sleepin'?"

"About six hours."

"You haven't moved. Not one inch."

I shrugged. "Perfect moments are ruined by movement."

She smiled at that. She reached up, testing the state of her messy hair. "I need a shower."

I stood and carefully arranged myself on the bed next to her, threading my arm under her head. I tsked her. "No. I just told you no moving allowed."

She chuckled, sitting up slightly to join Adam on my chest. She cupped his head. "He's just so pretty."

"Naturally."

We watched her thumb trace his ear. Adam stirred at her attention. Slowly, his blue eyes opened, regarding us earnestly.

"Good morning, sleepyhead," Sookie whispered.

He blinked languidly.

Sookie was quiet for a moment, then drew a breath sharply through her nose.

I was growing used to this sound. It meant that Adam was speaking to her. He didn't always, but when he did, it always caught her off guard.

"And?" I asked. "What was it this time?"

She nibbled her lip, looking at me with an almost guilty expression.

"Remember when you came to me that first night on my porch? You asked about my blood dreams, what I'd dreamt of you."

"Yes," I answered. "You said I was good to you."

"But it was more than that. In the dream, you said..." she tapered off, looking away.

"I said?"

"You... you said... Well, you kissed me. Kissed the life outta me, and then you told me that this," she gestured between she and I, "this was the _beginning_."

I paused. "The beginning," I echoed.

She nodded, "But like, _The Beginning_. You made it sound so important. Like some huge thing was gonna come out of our being together."

She looked back at our son. "He just said the same thing. He looked at you and I and thought the word 'beginning'."

I was silent. She continued in a whisper.

"We started it all, even way back then when you were just a ghost in my head. My brain just _knew_. We...us. We were destined for something amazing."

We fell into our thoughts. Adam watched us, letting us process what he'd known his whole, brief life.

Three sets of eyes blinked at each other.

No one moved.

**E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S~E~S**

Years passed.

Adam grew. Nothing about him, save his mother's good looks and telepathy, was unusual. He laughed. Then he sat up. The he crawled.

By the time he started walking, Amanda was born to us. His first sibling.

Throughout his entire life, Adam would always smell like hoar frost and water Forget-Me-Nots.

Mandy, as she came to be called, smelled of the Amanda's Blue butterfly after having gorged itself on nectar. Sookie had laughed out loud as I sipped blood from her thigh and scented my daughter through the womb, not believing my description. I insisted, it was exactly right. I even showed her a photo of the insect on the internet.

"Amanda's Blue," Sookie smiled as she gazed at the lovely, cerulean creature of my homeland. "Well, that saves us naming her." Amanda Blue Northman it was.

And so it went on.

Each of our children -and there were _many_ children- smelled of one or two very distinct things from my northern home.

Caleb, our third child, smelled like rock salt and water lilies.

Adele Marie? Of an ash grove and autumn campfires.

Silas, one of our strongest children, shocked me when he'd toddle into my arms, for he smelled exactly like my wolf pelt bedding from ten centuries before.

Each child's essence astonished me. Sookie rolled her eyes every time. She smelled nothing on them but baby powder and applesauce.

So it stayed a secret that only I detected. It was only fair, as half of the conversations in our house were conducted entirely in the heads of my mind-reading woman and children.

More years passed.

The world went on about its business and in time, Sookie and I were largely forgotten, just as we'd always hoped.

The Choosings still occurred on occasion, once a fairy hybrid child came of age.

One such Choosing happened exactly as I'd predicted. Sixteen years after the fateful night Sookie had taken me as her mate, Hunter walked into my bar after hours. He was there for business with Sookie. He'd been spending a lot of time with his stepfather, Alcide, and the Shreveport pack. He'd gotten his degree in engineering and planned to join his construction crew as an architect. I had been in my office, so I did not witness it. Sookie had been behind the bar going over the books with Pam. Jessica's nose had been hovering over the receipts. She was in her last few weeks of working for me, before she began her new job as Chief Human Liaison at the AVL.

Hunter had barely stepped into the room when he froze in his tracks.

Jessica looked up from her calculator.

Their eyes locked.

Hunter gasped loudly. "Jessica," he whispered.

They were shocked, not having seen each other in many years, despite our rather tight circle of family. He'd been a child, then a teenager in school. He'd left for New Orleans to study. Now he was back, a young man of twenty-two.

But their separation didn't matter. From the moment his dark eyes drilled into Jessica's pale blues, it was all over.

Light erupted from his palms. Two searing orbs exploded out, flying across the room, straight into my adopted progeny.

They torpedoed into Jessica's chest, knocking her off the chair and onto the hard tiles. But it didn't keep her down for long. According to Sookie, Jessica was already on her feet and running full speed at Hunter, who was striding across the room. He didn't see anyone else. As of that moment, neither did she. They leapt on each other, Jessica clamping her thighs around the tall man's waist. I'm told their kiss was downright obscene, all teeth and tongue and a mere prelude to days of nonstop fucking. I have no idea if they got a word in edgewise, if only to reintroduce themselves. They simply took off, probably into the nearby forest, where Hunter could introduce her sunlight and fairy blood while she could teach him just what it meant to take inexhaustible vampire lover.

He was now a safe as safe could be, thanks to his fiery protectress.

Not that attacks against the Chosen pairs happened much anymore.

At first, of course. The vast majority of vampires left in the world without such a tasty mate at their side thought they could simply cut in. Those ten thousand vampires and their luck, their indescribable luck, created much desent from those who would never know the joy of being paired with such feisty specimens of love and sass. There were a few, early attempts to separate some pairs in the hopes of claiming the Fae as their own, with very messy results. The unChosen vampire population soon realized that such attempts spelled certain death with zero drops of fairy blood to show for it.

I pitied none of them, save one.

Pam.

She loved me. She even came to love Sookie. She was patient and fair to our children, never openly favoring one above another, and could even be called kind... at a stretch.

But she remained unattached.

She seemed unfazed by it. She had never been a monogamist, and while she mourned the loss of the sun like all vampires, she did not begrudge those who regained it. She never spoke of it. She simply worked at my side, unstintingly loyal, for all those years.

Until my sixth daughter, Lana, turned nineteen.

One of the rare brunettes of my brood, Lana was an especially beautiful, thoughtful child. Where my other children laughed, she simply smiled. Where they scampered and skipped, she calmly walked. Her large blue eyes saw much, but her Cupid's bow mouth spoke little.

Needless to say, that fateful day when she and Pam saw each other, Lana didn't say much. She simply put her hands out, blew Pam away with her gift of love and Light, then they promptly mauled each other. Mercifully, I was not there to witness that Choosing, either. I was still a father, and did not react well when my children inevitably Chose their mate, even if that mate was Pam. But I had a unique pleasure knowing that my only Child and one of my many daughters had forged together. They made a striking couple. And though her sarcasm never wavered, I sensed Pam's happiness.

In fact, each of my children Chose well. Vampires I never met were impaled on their Light, so my say in the matter was already pointless. Still. I was an incredibly lucky father-in-law. None of my vampire in-laws irritated me too much.

My problems were much more personal.

To my slight horror, my desire for Sookie never simmered. It blazed, as bright and hot as the night she agreed to be mine. I had hoped that although we did not age, our time together would yield a comfort and routine that would lead to a kinder, gentler attraction to each other that could be easily overridden by rationality. I couldn't keep groping her like a horny teen for the rest of eternity.

Alas, that is exactly how we spent the rest of our lives.

I fucked her on every square inch of our new house, and continued doing so, even when it was as old as the Stackhouse homestead. I fucked her in seventy-two countries. She conceived in eleven of them outside of the states, and even gave birth in three. Her Light never dimmed. Worse, it grew brighter, and she more beautiful. She would be cooking, or playing with our children, or humming as she brushed her hair, or squinting as she read her books, and I would attack. I would shred thousands of her clothes in the end. Her breasts were a marvel every time I saw them. Her thighs stayed flawless, firm and sweet. Her lips tasted like honey. And her eyes would sparkle as she wrapped them around my cock nearly every day. Her pussy was always my downfall, as I would enter and get so lost in her that I couldn't untangle myself. It was just plain unfair. My woman only grew prettier, funnier, sexier, and gave me an endless parade of applesauce-loving miracles.

Wrapped in my arms, she'd arch into our lovemaking, and I was compelled to make more.

Regrettably, we lost many of those we cared about to mortality.

Herveaux and Hadley died within months of each other. Hadley went first, passing away in her sleep. They'd spent every last one of their days together, and even without the benefit of a bond, they were madly in love. Even in their old age. Herveaux lost much of his impressive physique. His tall frame bent over the decades, and rippling pectorals are a young man's possession. And yet, Hadley never lost that expression of lost longing when she looked at him. She would forever remember standing on a burning hillside, watching in amazement as a werewolf loped into view and swept her away from danger. He saved her. And she made him whole in return. After she died, Alcide simply refused to go on.

Jason was next. He lived to ninety-seven, his fairy genes giving him a long, healthy life. At the end, he thought his visits with Sookie were dreams, his baby sister still young and beautiful. He talked to her like she was a memory. She brought him things from his past, things she thought he'd like. A quilt from Gran's house. Old photos. A football. He'd run his fingers over the glossy paper and the pebbly pigskin, losing himself deeper in nostalgia. It hurt Sookie, but she kept coming to see him, right up until the last day.

Ludwig. Lafayette. Sam Merlotte. Tara, after many years when she finally returned to Bon Temps. Good people who's death hurt Sookie deeply. I hurt for her, though I was exceptionally lucky. The only people I loved most had no such date with death.

We never learned for sure if Adam, or any of our children, were unkillable. He was a wonderful child, and a strong, good man, but he exhibited no unusual abilities in the vampire-fairy children born to all of the Chosen. They all Chose vampires when they reached adulthood, and the women all had children of their own. Adam Chose as well, a sweet vampire with a biting wit. Sookie liked her. I teased her that he'd married his mother. He lived a happy life, but it seemed that his extraordinary gift to the world was given when he was three minutes old. After that, he was mercifully normal.

Sookie and I did not live to see any of our children die, thank Almighty fuck.

I won't bore you with our fates. Yes, we did eventually die, as all things invariably must. The number of years it took and the means of which it happened are not important. Suffice it to say, Sookie met hers first. I felt her leave me the moment it happened. And unlike Claudine's abduction many centuries before, I knew for certain that she was gone. I took only enough time to see her body one last time, then gather our many, many children and kiss them goodbye. Many cried, others railed, but in the end, they accepted my choice. As immortals themselves, they all had similar choices ahead of them someday.

On a warm spring morning, two days after Sookie's departure, I met my own true death. I'll give you one last detail, and admit that I met the sun one last time, with a small, plain wooden box filled with Sookie's ashes under my arm.

I burned alongside her.

And will always burn for her.

My angel. My Fae. _My Sookie._

_The End_


End file.
